Noise
by SomewhereApart
Summary: As Regina struggles to deal with being awake in her life as Roni, she finds solace in an expected familiar face. For OQ Secret Admirer 2018.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:** Later chapters of this story will contain adult content, and thus will not be available in full here on FFnet. For the full versions, you'll need to read/follow on Ao3. Ao3 also gets all story updates at least one day earlier. _

* * *

There's too much noise here.

It's not just that Seattle is a bigger city than Storybrooke – although it is, and she finds herself increasingly irritated by traffic snarls, and the seemingly never-ending construction, and quite frankly by how much she's currently paying just to live here (she lives in a shitty apartment a few blocks from the bar, a "flex one-bedroom" that she thinks doesn't even deserve to be called _that_ , and it costs her more than a mortgage on a modest house in that little town in Maine).

No, it's not just real estate, and people who don't know how to drive, and a new detour all the damn time, it's also… Roni.

Regina's curse had remade her mind much like everyone else's – she'd known where Regina Victoria Mills, small-town mayor, had been born (Camden, Maine; they'd moved to Storybrooke when she was four), and gone to school (Holy Cross Primary and Secondary, then Wellesley), who her first kiss had been (Aaron Mannis, behind the chapel pews at Holy Cross, on a Tuesday afternoon when both their parents had been late to retrieve them). She'd known how both of her parents were supposed to have died (Daddy, a heart attack at age fifty-two; Cora, from a one-two punch of seasonal bronchitis followed by a rather virulent strain of flu that became pneumonia and eventually felled her), had even had an ex-fiancé who had passed on (Daniel's face, but his name had been Toby Clarkson; he'd died in a boating accident, not at her mother's hand).

It had all existed there in her head, like a movie she'd seen so many times she'd committed it to memory. A long list of names and dates and experiences that had blossomed in her mind, had simply been there waiting for her when she woke up that first morning in Maine.

But it had never felt _hers_. She'd known, always known, that it wasn't real. She'd known all the facts of this Regina Mills, but there had been a detachment. An Other-ness to the life that was supposed to have happened before her glorious curse brought them here to this Land. She could tell you how she felt when she got the call about Toby, but she can't recall _feeling_ it. She'd known all along that it was a lie. After all, she was the one who'd set the lies in motion to begin with.

But Roni, well… Roni wasn't her doing. Despite her involvement in casting the curse itself, she'd had no say in it, no control over the outcome. It wasn't _hers_ , and she was a victim of it as much as anyone else.

And Roni was supposed to last. Roni is _supposed_ to be a victim to this curse that still holds, but she's not. Not anymore.

Now she's awake, and it's hell.

It's too much _noise_ , all of Roni's experiences, her thoughts, her fears, her broken hearts (and boy, did she have plenty of those), her traumas, they're all there inside of Regina. Wedged in alongside the moment Toby Clarkson proposed, and the day she married Leopold the Good, she has memories of Roni winning the 6th grade spelling bee and the day she got kicked out of her step-dad's home at fourteen.

She used to wake in the night in a cold sweat, shadow memories of Leopold, of being eighteen and scared and resigned to what it meant to be properly married to a king. Now she wakes with her heart in her throat, just below the memory of a knifeblade pressing threateningly above her choker, her jeans ripped at the button and fly, someone's hand too strong, bruising against her skin, and thank God for those thick, chunky-soled boots she'd loved so much in her late-teens because they were heavy and hard, steel-toed for when she'd had to wriggle her way free and kick the bastard in the balls before she ran until she was in a different, much safer back alley than the one she'd been squatting in just hours before.

It's a memory, and a strong one. One she can't shake. She can still remember the smell of him, Jim Beam and mothballs, and stale breath. Can still remember the bloodshot eyes, the slope of his nose, the fake electric blue of his hair.

Can't remember his name.

But she remembers the assault, and the fear still haunts her.

It never happened.

None of it happened, it's not _real_ , but this curse, this one, it feels real.

The elation of the day she'd signed the deed on Roni's Bar. She remembers the bubbling thrill of it in a way that she'd never felt for her first Mayoral win in Storybrooke.

And now, she has the rest. The truth. The heavy sadness and gripping panic that comes with the thought of what happens if this curse breaks; the breaking agony of living her whole life with Henry (her little prince, her sweet boy) as just a friend. Just some guy she met in her bar, when they were straddling either side of their thirties. What if they drift apart? What if they have some stupid argument and he cuts her off?

What if she can't keep the truth of this bottled up inside of her and starts blurting crazytalk like, _Lucy's right_ , and _I'm your mother_ , and _Everything in your book is real, it really happened, to me, to us, it's all real, please wake up, Henry, please wake up._

It's all just too much _noise._

She wonders sometimes if this is what it was like for Snow. For David. For Ruby, or Whale, or Granny, or any of the hundreds of citizens whose minds she cursed away and wrote anew. Did they feel this when the curse broke? This tension? This pressure? This torn-in-two feeling?

She hopes they didn't. Hopes that the breaking of the curse made it all feel a little less… wrong.

She hopes that they could find some way to that memorized-movie place, and not this constant _noise_.

It's awful. She hates it.

Sometimes, she thinks the only way to shut it up is to swallow enough Maker's Mark to quiet at least one of the lives inside her.

It's not healthy, she knows that, but it gets the job done.

Today is one of those days.

It's Henry's adoption day. The day she brought him home, the day he saved her life, saved her soul. He'd brought her donuts, out of the blue.

"No reason," he'd told her when she'd asked why, her suppressed emotions a hard knot in her throat that she could barely swallow around. "Just woke up thinking of you; thought you'd like a raspberry-filled."

She'd rasped a thank you, and taken the jelly donut. The powdered sugar coating had tasted like chalk dust.

There's too much noise.

This is all too much.

She'll endure it – she always does – and she'll suffer this raw, aching pain forever if it means he'll live. Safe. Whole. Without poison coursing through his veins.

She'll chew chalk dust and cloying sweetness and act like everything is fine while it feels like her heart is breaking. She'll do that. It's fine. He's worth it – so, so worth it.

She just wishes she didn't have to do it alone. That she had someone, some kind of solace. She'd even take cold comfort at this point, something empty, something meaningless. She'd take the heat of a warm body for just an hour if it would mean she could quiet the noise.

But all she has is this bar, and all these lies, all these fake people wedged in her brain (she has no right to feel lonely, she supposes, not with Regina Mills and Roni Cope for constant company).

The second Henry had left, she'd reached for the bourbon, poured herself a shot and washed away the sticky-dry taste of her mouth with the burn of promised oblivion. And then she'd poured herself another.

They've barely finished the lunch rush, but she doesn't give a damn. She can run this bar half-drunk; hell, she'd knocked back a stiff whiskey once or twice before a town hall meeting and Storybrooke still stands to tell the tale.

She just needs a little bit of quiet.

She faces the back of the bar for a moment, feels the spread of liquor under her skin, a pleasant little hum (not drunk, not yet, not even a buzz, just warmth), the shot glass cool in her grip.

It falls to the floor, hits the rubber mat there with a dull thunk when she hears a voice behind her say, "I've always appreciated a woman who can daytime drink."

She knows that voice – would know it anywhere. She's heard it again and again in her dreams. _Milady, you're injured_ and _I doubt I'd ever forget meeting you_ and _Use that on me; let her go_ , and a million other words in between, but still far, far too few.

For a minute, she stays stock still. It can't be him; she's hallucinating. Robin is dead, has been dead for a decade and a half. She's mourned him (she mourns him still, quietly, now and then – especially _now_ when she spends so much time in this bar that Roni Cope had filled with arrows without even knowing why).

She's going to turn around, and there will be only empty air – like every time she catches sight of a particular leather jacket from across the bar, only to double-take and realize it's not _that_ particular leather jacket. Or when she hears a laugh that sounds so much like his, and squints from table to table only to hear it again from some silly hipster as he tosses back a Rainier longneck.

Or, she realizes with a start, she'll turn around and it will be that _other_ Robin. The one they accidentally wished into existence, the one who married her other half all those years ago. She hasn't seen him – either of them – in a long, long time (too painful, too many memories, too much green-eyed envy she hates to admit to), but he's there. He exists. God, she's an idiot – of course there's an explanation for Robin's voice in her bar even after he's long dead.

Telling herself she's being stupid, Regina takes a breath, prepares herself for the inevitable disappointment, and turns to face her ghosts.

And there he is, standing on the other side of her bar. She smiles pleasantly at him, a reflex, cursing herself for the way she drinks in the sight of him. It's pathetic, but she _misses_ Robin – her Robin – and maybe this other Robin is just a poor shadow of the man she loved, but it feels so good to see him alive and breathing. To pretend for just a moment.

And it only takes a moment. Just one, or maybe three, for her to realize that this isn't Locksley.

She notices the hair first – not the darker color of her wished-for not-quite-love, but that softer brown _her_ Robin had had, his temples flecked with grey (she used to run her fingers through them, those little strands of silver catching moonlight as they lay in her bed late at night). But men age, and hair silvers, and so she dismisses it even though her heart knocks a double-beat at the sight. Maybe that other Robin is finally catching up, that's all.

But his gaze sweeps her quickly, down and up, and he smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that makes her heart ache. Locksley never smiled like that, not at _her_ , anyway. Not with that warmth and affection. Not with those _eyes_.

There's a scar on his neck; it's new, or at least it's unfamiliar to her, creeping up from under the collar of his red-checkered flannel as he leans against the bar. It looks like a river delta, or like—lightning, she thinks, her head doing a single dizzy pirouette.

But it's the voice that does it. It's warmer, teasing, without the slight chill of Locksley's, the edge of not-quite-rightness. He teases her, says, "Ah, so she's not a pillar of salt. I was starting to worry you'd been petrified."

It reminds her of that day in the farmhouse, the little edge of flirtation, and the newness. He tips his head just the same way he had then, but he doesn't speak to her like he knows her. He flirts with her like they've just met, and that— _that_ —is when she knows it's him.

 _Robin_.

Something in her middle just _knows_.

This is him, her Robin, her soulmate, somehow here after all these years – looking just as she last saw him, except for the faint silvery creep of that scar on his neck and the fact that he is very much _alive_. And from the sound of it, very much cursed.

The revelation strikes her dumb, steals her speech, and for a moment all the noise in her head falls silent. She hears nothing, not the din of the bar, not Regina Mills or Roni Cope, not anything, as if her senses are all rerouting for a moment, funneling all their resources to her eyes in order for her to take him in properly (she doesn't need touch or smell or sound, not yet, she just needs to _see_ him standing there in front of her).

Her eyes start to burn, but she's afraid to blink and lose him.

And then her ears are working again, they must be, because he tilts his head a little further, his eyes narrowing slightly, and she hears him ask her, "Do I have something on my face, or perhaps I've grown a second head I'm not aware of?"

Regina's brow knits. "What?"

Robin tells her, "You're staring," and she is suddenly very aware that she's gaping at him like a fish. Regina snaps her jaw shut just as Robin starts to don that all too familiar smirk and tease, "I'm not used to women being so stunned by the sight of me. I am flattered, though."

She'd be embarrassed, but damnit, she's earned her shock this time. Still, she recovers, clearing her throat and shaking her head a little, but her gaze never strays from him, even as she makes excuses:

"I'm sorry, you just… look like someone. Someone I knew."

"Someone you liked, I hope," he tells her, and oh, Regina could just melt into the floor at the sound of that accent again. "You looked at me like I was a ghost."

He doesn't know the half of it.

"Someone I haven't seen in a long, long time." She holds out a hand for him, desperate for him to shake it if only for confirmation that he's _real_ , that he's solid. That this isn't another dream. He takes it, his fingers a little cold from the dreary Seattle air as they wrap around hers. But he's alive, warming under the heat of her thumb, and it's all she can do to keep her voice steady as she introduces herself: "Roni Cope. Nice to meet you."

( _Again_ , she adds in her head, thinking of arrows zinging past her – into a flying monkey in the Forest, her quick fingers in Storybrooke, landing with a thunk into Queen Snow's carriage, or sinking deftly into a log in a realm that wasn't real. No arrows this time, but she feels the whizzing rush of his introduction just the same.)

"Abe Warner," he tells her, the name foreign and unexpected.

It seems… not very _Robin_. She tries not to wrinkle her nose at it, tilting her head instead and asking him, "Abe? Let me guess—"

She starts, but he cuts her off, holding up a warning finger and telling her, "If you're about to ask me about my honesty, I have to warn you, I will walk right back out that door. Immediately. Personal policy of mine, you see."

Those so-blue eyes are dancing with humor, deep dimples popping out to reignite memories of his smile. They pop like flashbulbs, one after the other – sarcastic, across a council table during the year they all forgot; warm and sweet in the back hallway at Granny's, his fingers in her hair; wide and easy and open, looking at Roland with pride; sly and sexy, his teeth biting into that lower lip as she'd fought to catch her breath beneath him in Camelot, both of them sweaty and jelly-limbed in that canopied bed. It's almost too much for her to bear, this assault of memories long shoved into the quiet places amongst the cacophony of noise in her head, but she never wants to give it up. Not if it means he's real, somehow, and here, somehow.

She's not sure how she's even managing to keep up her end of the conversation, but she is, telling him, "I was going to say ' _Let me guess, it's short for Abraham_.'"

Robin has the decency to look a little sheepish at that, telling her, "Ah," and then. "No. Abel. But I've never really been a fan, so Abe."

Abel️, she thinks, struck down by Cain. Zelena flits across her mind, but she pushes the thought away, shoves it down deep under all that noise. She's forgiven her sister, she doesn't blame her. And she's been telling herself that for fifteen years so it must be true.

"Abe suits you," she tells him, and then she goes for the easy mark, because she can't think of what else to do: "Although I hope for your sake, you don't have a brother named Cain."

Robin (not Robin, she thinks, _Abe_ ) smirks, a wry twist of one side of his mouth that knocks the breath out of her with its familiarity and says, "Thankfully, no. But I do have a twin – Seth."

He says it knowingly, assuming she'll get the significance. And after twelve years at Holy Cross (they weren't her years, not really, but she remembers them), she does. Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, born after Cain murdered Abel. God's gift to Eve after her loss.

How fitting.

"Identical or fraternal?" Regina can't resist asking.

"Identical," he tells her, and Regina doesn't bother to fight the wry chuckle that escapes her.

There's no way that Abe, this man with Robin's face but none of his memories, can appreciate the sheer irony of him sharing a face with a man named after one given as a replacement to a woman deep in her grief.

Regina is no Eve, and it's surely just a coincidence, just one of those wry little tricks these dark curses like to throw in. Still, she thinks of Robin of Locksley, off somewhere with the Queen, and wonders how they're faring these days.

 _Roland_ , she thinks with a start. His father is back, standing right in front of her, and he doesn't know. He should know, somehow, she should find a way to send word. (If only the Sound had one of those realm-hopping mermaids when she needed one…)

Abe hasn't missed a beat, is still flirting (is he flirting? Yes, she thinks, he is) with her: "Luckily for you, we're estranged – imagine how speechless you'd have been if there were two men this handsome sitting across your bar. You might never have been able to give me your name. Roni, short for…?"

He's expecting a name in trade, and she doesn't disappoint.

"Veronica."

"Middle?"

"You first."

"Jude."

"Beatriz," she tells him, a little thrill rippling through her at their quick back-and-forth. She's missed him, _God_ , she's missed him, his quick wit, his laughing eyes. The way he can draw her in with something as simple as trading names. She doesn't want it to end, doesn't want this little fever dream to break, so she teases him some more, asks, "Do you want my date of birth, last three addresses, and my social, too?"

His smile widens, dimples winking, eyes bright, and she could just about weep when he digs his teeth into his bottom lip for a second. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed _that_.

And then he tells her, "A menu will do, thanks," and she remembers where they are, who she's supposed to be, and what this stranger in her bar is expecting her to do – namely, _her job_ , not staring at him like he's the second coming of her dead soulmate.

Regina shakes her head and laughs dryly, reaching for one of the plastic-coated menus beneath her bar.

"Oh, God. Of course." She hands it over, and says, "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking."

Abe smirks at her, amused that she's frazzled, no doubt – she can add that to the list of things that remain unchanged. "You were dazzled by my pretty face, of course."

"Yeah, that must be it," she drawls, a little thrill flickering through her at the thought that she gets another chance to flirt with him. "Flag me down when you're ready to order."

"I'll start with a whiskey," he tells her, eyes on the menu. He glances up at her to add, "Or whatever it was you were having. Nobody should have to daytime drink alone."

Regina stares at him for a second too long, remembering standing at a different bar, Robin with a lowball in hand and hopeful eyes. Remembering the flutter of nerves and attraction in her belly as she'd insisted she didn't daytime drink. And then she turns for the back bar, a higher shelf, pulling down the Makers 46 and two glasses, eyeballing them each a pour. She doesn't ask if he wants ice – if she knows him, he'll take it neat. He always had.

She settles his bourbon on the bar just beside his right arm. He's shed his coat and rucked his sleeve up a little, and even the slim edge of black ink peeking from beneath his cuff makes her heart ache.

"This one's on the house," she tells him, and he reaches for it, lifts it and tips it slightly toward her in a toast.

"Thank you," he says, and then, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Veronica Cope."

Regina lifts her glass to clink against his.

"Likewise, Abel Warner."

If she smiles at him a little too long then, well, at least she's not alone.

 **.::.**

He orders fish and chips, and a Ruud Awakening IPA (she'd almost laughed when he said it – almost, but not quite) to chase that bourbon, and Regina tells herself to leave the man alone and let him eat. Or to at least not stand right in front of him and gawk.

But she can't leave him _alone_ , not really. She can't bring herself to walk where she can't see him, where she can't keep glancing his way and assuring herself that he's real. What if she ducks into the back for a second, and he leaves, and she never sees him again? She's been here in Hyperion Heights for months and never seen him, it could easily happen again.

So she putters around the bar like an idiot, fixing this and that, straightening bottles, wiping down surfaces. She makes a sweep of the room herself, and liberates every empty-or-nearly-so drink to refill and run the glass washer. She pops the register and bank faces the bills.

And all the while Abe sits there, munching on thick-cut fries with malt vinegar, and sipping his beer, watching the Mariners play a day game on one of the TVs.

He doesn't bother her; she doesn't bother him. But she doesn't think about anything else.

Everything she does, every move she makes, is some sort of autopilot. Her body carries her through all of it, but her mind is buzzing with questions: How is he here? Why isn't he dead? Is he even real? How long has he been alive? Has he _always_ been alive? Did the crystal just boot him out of his body and into some new one on the other side of the country? (She knows that last one isn't true, she'd tried to find him, to trace him, she'd done magic, it would have known if he'd just left town. He'd been dead and gone, she _knows_ that.)

 _Can she kiss him?_ she wonders. Will it break this curse? They're in love, they were, she has no doubt of it (he'd died for her – what's a bigger expression of love than _that?_ ). They're soulmates, for God's sake.

He'd definitely been flirting with her, there was definite interest, so what would happen if she indulged it? If she let it go on, and flirted back, and if he came back again and again, and… Would it jeopardize this curse she so loathes? The one keeping Henry from her but also keeping him alive?

Would her own selfish need to have Robin again be the thing that damned her son?

She won't do it, she thinks. She won't even try, won't let it happen. Abe Warner will be just like this too-grown Henry Mills. Someone she loves dearly and deeply, and privately. She'll be his friend, and nothing more, and hope she can sustain it as long as possible – and she will give thanks for every single breath that comes and goes from his body because of it.

It'll be hell, but she'll do it. She'll have to.

The thought weighs heavily on her as she stares from the far side of the bar, watching as her soulmate slugs back another mouthful of ale, his throat bobbing with a swallow. He's still watching that TV, and the line of his profile makes her heart ache.

She wants to touch him again; she shouldn't.

But then, Snow and David had been True Loves, had broken _her_ curses with a touch of their lips back in the Enchanted Forest, and then macked all over each other in Storybrooke to no avail, hadn't they?

It was the curse. It had been in the way. They hadn't _truly_ loved each other there, so their illicit kisses didn't hold enough magic. Too much guilt in the way, she supposes (and she has that in spades when it comes to Robin).

This man, this not-Robin, he doesn't love her, not yet, he barely even _knows_ her. And she doesn't love him either. She loves what's hiding beneath Abel Jude Warner – the man she can't see, can't quite touch. She's loved that man quietly for the last decade and a half, carefully stitched up the wound in her heart and let it slowly mend. But it had never fully closed, not really. Not truly.

And now he's here, breathing her air and drinking her whiskey, and every carefully placed stitch on her heart has been popped and left to bleed like it was fresh.

She doesn't think she could love Abel Warner if she tried. Not knowing how close she is to her second (third, fourth, fifth?) chance with the man she was destined to love.

It's a thought that should hurt, but it doesn't. It brings an odd sense of peace, a welcome little bit of quiet.

Regina has never been more thankful for this stupid curse, and for stupid wiped memories, for him looking at her without all that _love_ in his eyes.

There's too much noise in her head, and too much quiet in his, and that, she thinks, will be the thing that saves them.


	2. Chapter 2

When Roni Cope was twenty-three, she'd gotten a phone call. Her step-father had died (may he rot), succumbing to lung cancer at the ripe old age of forty-six.

She had felt a lot of things about the bastard's passing, but the starkest had been a sudden awareness of her own mortality. She'd been half his age exactly at the time, and the idea that her life could be half over, well… that hadn't sat well.

She hadn't gone to his funeral (wouldn't have even if she'd been invited), but she had thrown her Lucky Strikes in the trash.

And then she'd fished them out again immediately, because damnit she'd spent good money on them, and the four cigarettes left in the pack weren't what stood between her and dying of busted lungs like Sal had.

But once those four cigarettes were gone, she'd told herself, she wasn't going to buy any more.

She'd made that pack last another whole week, but she'd kept to her word. Mostly.

She doesn't smoke anymore, not really, not regularly. She's lit up a couple of times in intervening years, but she's never picked up the habit again.

Regina has never smoked a day in her life; her lungs are pristine.

All of that – the death and the Lucky Strikes and the infrequent indulgences – it's all noise. All static in her brain, lies the curse had told her. The little punch of that first cigarette in the morning, the settled feeling of lighting up during a bad mood, the taste of tobacco mixed with whiskey or black coffee… She remembers those things like she lived them, but it's all just noise.

And yet she stops off on her way home tonight, ducks into an all-night smoke shop around the corner from the bar and asks for a pack of Luckies, her heart pumping hard in her chest.

Cigarettes are awful. They're cancer sticks. They're disgusting. She'd have lit into Henry if he'd ever brought a pack home, if he'd ever done something so stupid and reckless with his health.

But it's his adoption day, and Robin had walked into her bar with a stranger's name and eyes that were so familiar but didn't recognize her at all, and Regina needs _something._

She could drink it away like she usually does, but she doesn't want another damn bourbon (she's already had half a bottle since noon; later she might blame that buzz she's been maintaining all day for her poor decision-making). She wants a goddamn cigarette.

But she shouldn't, she really shouldn't. This craving isn't real, it's just _noise._

"Wait—"

The girl behind the counter turns with the pack of Lucky Strikes in her hand, snaps her gum, lifts a pierced brow.

Regina shakes her head; what is she _doing?_

"Never mind," she tells her.

But when the girl repeats her, _Never mind?,_ Regina thinks of smoke in her lungs, of the soothing ebb of that first inhale after too long without and says, "Give me the American Spirits instead."

If she's going to indulge in someone else's vices, she's at least going to do it with a pack that says NATURAL across the front.

(They're still cigarettes; this is still stupid. But she's done a lot of very stupid things in her lifetime. On the list of Regina's mistakes, indulging in a pack of cigarettes falls far below murder and mayhem, so she'll allow herself this one.)

She tears the cellophane off the pack before she's even out of the store, crumples it in her fist and pitches it into the trash can on the curb, flipping open the pack and tugging out the white paper inside as well. And then she thumbs out a cigarette with a practiced ease she has no right to, holds it in her lips as she tucks the pack away in her jacket pocket and lifts her newly purchased lighter to flick it into life.

The first inhale is familiar and wrong at the same time – the flavor isn't quite what she remembers, but there's a comfort to the action that has her releasing the first lungful of smoke on a sigh.

Her chest burns a little, and she remembers that this isn't _her,_ she's never done this before, despite how vivid the memory is. And yet…

She savors the cigarette for her whole walk home, feels the hit of nicotine in her veins, the way her heart beats a little harder. It reminds her of late nights, and long talks, and that girl she'd loved at twenty-one who'd looked suspiciously like Mal. She'd always tasted like smoke, like fire, and Regina takes a deep drag and relishes the flavor of a memory that shouldn't fucking exist.

This is maddening.

She stubs what's left of the cigarette into ash on the bricks of her building, stepping the butt out for good measure as she fishes out her keys.

Her apartment is two flights up, and then three doors down; two sets of deadbolts click and tumble open before Regina can shut out the world with a little sigh of relief.

She's tired. Wiped from a long day of work and too much high emotion, she leans her brow against the door for a second and breathes. An echo of tobacco rises up her throat, and she tells herself she's not going to smoke another one. (She feels less agitated than she had before, and that shouldn't work. She's never smoked a day in her life, all of this is wrong…)

It's still dark in her apartment, but Regina shuts her eyes anyway, drawing in another deep inhale. She sees Abe's face in her mind again, and tears well behind her lashes.

She'd closed the book on that part of her heart, shut the final page and left Robin there on a shelf, tried not to think about him too often. Just enough to keep him dear to her, but not so much that she'd drowned under the weight of her grief.

And now, after a day spent watching him, she can admit that she'd started to forget things.

She'd had photos – a precious few of them, and a single cell phone video of him talking with Henry in those weeks after Camelot. He'd been telling him about how to properly aim an arrow, something to impress Violet with, and she'd felt so ridiculously soft-hearted at the sight of them that she'd subtly shifted her phone to video and caught the moment.

She knows every one of the fifty-two seconds by heart. Every modulation of his voice, every shift of his shoulders, the shape of his quarter-profile when he'd turned to look at Henry.

He'd been facing away from her, something she'd been regretting for a decade and a half. She'd wanted his face, his smile, those dimples in his cheeks, the stubble, the blue of his eyes, the lines around them.

But they'd been gone, buried under the dirt, and over time… they'd muddled. Gone soft at the edges like a watercolor painting.

Until today, when there he'd been. Right in front of her, every bit of him, and she curls her fist against the door as a fresh wave of emotion rises like a tide – grief and relief and self-loathing for every little feature she'd let fade.

Her shoulders shake; her breath hitches.

And then she hears a plaintive mew somewhere near her foot and feels the warmth of a soft furry body against her ankle.

Regina has never kept pets. Horses, sure, but they'd had their own space. She'd never let Henry get the dog he wanted, had never tried to fill the empty rooms of her mansion with a furry friend to keep her company. It had seemed like too much work, too much mess. Cats were for barns, dogs were for herding or hunting or yapping, and God knows she couldn't stand that last one.

But Roni, Roni has Ladro. He'd been a stray, or at least a wanderer. Had shown up on her fire escape again and again, yowling for entry. Hungry. She'd let him split cans of the tuna fish she'd been eating regularly to offset the price of getting her bar up and running. Had left him little bowls of water – always on the fire escape. He wasn't hers to keep, and she didn't have time for a cat anyway.

But then one night it had been cold and rainy, and he'd been there again, mewing and shivering and wet, and so inside he'd come. He hasn't left since. She steps on crumpled tin foil balls and stuffed catnip mice more often than she'd like to admit, and as she finally flips on the light of her apartment, she catches sight of his favorite toy, the battered squeaky fox that she's replaced at least three times since she took him in.

That wet, chilly night had been years ago now, which means it hadn't happened at all, and Regina has no goddamned idea where this cat actually came from.

Still, he's sweet, and it's nice to have someone to talk to.

Tonight, he's looking up at her with those icy blue eyes of his, letting out another little meow. If she was more cynical, she'd think he's just hungry (she gives him a can of food when she gets home from the bar every night, refills his bowl with kibble, refreshes his water). But he's winding through her legs now, rubbing up against them and purring, and Regina thinks maybe he just knows she's upset and wants to comfort her.

There's no one else to do it, nobody who knows her anyway, so Regina wipes the tears from her cheeks and bends to lift him.

Maybe she'd been wrong about pets for all these years; she thinks she'll miss him if she ever has to leave him behind.

Ladro rubs his head immediately under her chin, his purrs rumbling even deeper, and she presses her face into his soft grey fur and sighs, "Boy, do I have a story for you…"

He may be Roni's, this scruffy little guy, may be part of the curse, part of the noise, but at least she has one soul she can talk to without having to filter out all the static. Someone she can be honest with, about everything. No filtering out what's Regina from what's Roni from what's Mayor Mills. No having to keep her story straight, or bottle up all the painful, wrenching truths that are ripping her guts apart right now.

With Ladro, it's all just… honest.

So she begins to tell him everything as she carries him the five feet to their little kitchen, plopping him onto the floor there as she cracks open a little can of food and puts it into a bowl for him. She starts with the story of how they met – the first time: flying monkeys and scraped arms, secret passageways and sleeping curses, and the way he'd managed to make the gnawing, gnashing grief of her separation from Henry just a little bit less painful.

She keeps talking as he chows down, and as she washes her face, the bathroom door open so he can hear her (he's a cat, she always thinks talking to him like this is ridiculous, but Roni had done it, and it's a hard habit to break). Tells him about finding each other in another curse, about how nervous she'd been when she'd kissed him, how when he'd kissed her back it had felt like fireworks popping in her chest.

She gives Ladro the Cliff's Notes version of their separation, of baby Robyn's conception, and those weeks in Camelot, and after, when they'd tried so hard to knit back together what Zelena had managed to tear asunder.

Ladro curls up in bed with her when she climbs beneath the covers, tucking himself against her side, butting his head into the cup of her hand for more pets. (Roni had tried to curb that particular behavior – the bedsharing. It hadn't worked, she'd always woken up with him beside her anyway, so here they are.) Regina lies in the dark, staring at the slant of light through her blinds on the ceiling as she tells Ladro that Robin had died, that he'd been taken from her too soon, and then all about today. His reappearance.

"I don't know what it means," she says. "I don't know why he's here, _how_ he's here. I don't know if I can wake him like I did Zelena, or even if I should. What if I do, and we can never kiss, because it breaks the curse and Henry dies? It would probably be worth it anyway, even if we can't kiss. At least I could talk to him again. I could have someone other than you who knows who I am – no offense, you're good company." She glances down toward the rumbling purr beneath her touch, scratches at a silky ear. "You're just not great at conversation, and your advice is a bit… lacking."

For a minute, she's quiet, and then she whispers, "What if he's angry at me? I let his children go – I let Zelena raise Robyn; he'd have hated that. And Roland left, and I never got him back – I never tried. He'd hate that I split myself; I know he would. I think… I think if he woke up, maybe he wouldn't… be very happy with me. And it's been years; I've changed. What if he was right all those years ago, and it _is_ all about timing, and we had our time? What if it…"

She sighs into the dark again, and says, "Maybe it's better like this, at least for a little while. Or am I just being a coward?"

Her only answer is Ladro's steady purr.

The light of a dreary dawn builds up slowly; everything grows greyer, muted shapes coming to life around her. The dresser, the nightstand, that Bowie painting on the wall opposite her bed. (Roni had painted it; Roni used to paint.)

Regina finally falls asleep with the scent of cigarettes clinging to her curls, and the rumble of a warm body against her side, under her palm.

She dreams of Abe, of the Enchanted Forest, of smitten kisses in that red dress at Granny's.


	3. Chapter 3

Abe comes into the bar nearly every day for a week – always for lunch, always fish and chips and that IPA. Always with a smile for her.

Every day it hurts a little less, and a little more.

He talks to her, and he flirts with her, and the lilt of his voice and his tendency to tease, his wit, that little bit of snark, they're all so painfully familiar to her. She recognizes Robin in him more and more, and yet… she also sees the differences. He seems to like sports – he stays for a while in the bar every day, eats slowly, watches whatever she has playing on the TV while he's there. Robin had never much cared for sports (she wonders if he would have, if he'd had more time here.)

Abe is a little more brash, a little rougher around the edges; he has plenty of Robin's charm but a little more bite. He makes an occasional off-color remark or darkly funny joke that makes her guffaw and shake her head. Regina wonders if that's what fifteen years of prison memories does to a man.

Robin had had a broody streak. He could sit and nurse a drink and a spiral of self-loathing for a good spell of time if he was so inclined. There were more than a few times that Regina had woken up to an empty bed in Camelot, and after. When she'd found him he had always been staring at the night sky, or the walls, or the fire he'd lit in her fireplace because "it was something to do, and I couldn't sleep," his face creased in a deep frown. What happened with Zelena had weighed on him, and though they'd both lost sleep over it, they hadn't talked about it nearly enough. For all their promises of getting through it together, they'd both held themselves back, both kept secrets.

When they had talked about it, he'd admitted she was hard to talk to sometimes. He'd worried so much about hurting her even more with his honest feelings, worried about scraping open the wounds he'd dug into her with his betrayal already.

For all his airy lightness, Robin was a good brooder when he put his mind to it, and surprisingly taciturn when the mood arose, but Abe seems almost the opposite. He'll zone out over the game on the TV, watch it but not react, and she thinks maybe he's not paying attention at all. Maybe his mind is somewhere else.

When she broaches the subject cautiously, tiptoes around it with, "It looks like you've got a lot on your mind today…" he stares at her for just a moment, and then he unloads.

She stands there for fifteen minutes straight and listens to him bitch about the foreman at his job. (Construction, afternoons into evenings, and she worries that someday he'll be injured, or he'll fall, or _something else_ will fall, and she'll lose him again. Why couldn't he have been an accountant?) He's incensed over something about shift schedules, and how he understands seniority but not when those who have it are fucking incompetent, and what's the point of working harder and better when you get no credit for any damn thing you're doing.

She has a flash of memory, that year after the curse broke when she had tried and tried to be better, do better, and felt like nobody had seen her. She remembers a conversation long forgotten ("Oh, I'm not sure that's best," and having to apologize for snapping at having to ask permission to see her own damn _son_ ), remembers that feeling like pushing and pushing the boulder of her redemption uphill only to pause for a moment and see only more hill to climb above her before anything she did might be deemed good enough.

It's not the same, not at all the same, but she aches for his frustration.

She can't help leaning over her bar and laying a hand out on the cool surface of it, palm up in invitation. "It sucks when people don't see how hard you try; believe me, I know."

Abe's hand falls into hers, his fingers warm today; the way his thumb rubs across her knuckles makes her wish he would just wake up already so she could touch him properly. All of a sudden, she misses him fiercely – this is one of those times it hurts a little _more_. When he's holding her her hand, but he's _not_ , it's not _him_. He doesn't know her, and it guts her – not being able to comfort him or be comforted by him. Holding his hand with the awkward tentativeness of strangers.

It makes Regina's eyes burn; she straightens and tries to draw back before Abe notices – but he's so much like Robin in some ways, and one of them is an ability to read her stormy moods. His fingers tighten around hers and grip, his head tilting, brow furrowing.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Regina shakes her head. It doesn't even sound convincing to herself.

Abe lifts his brows, gives her a look that's so quintessentially Robin it makes her eyes water. She exhales heavily; there will be no hiding it from him now.

So she doesn't even bother, just drops her voice along with her gaze and admits, "I'm just kinda… lonely." She glances up, her smile tight, and tells him, "I'm missing someone, and it makes everything else…"

"Harder," he finishes for her, his tone a little too knowing. He misses people too. He must.

His thumb rubs her knuckles again; she's stopped trying to pull away. Instead she curls her fingers with his, lets them weave and slide together.

After a moment, he tells her quietly, "I have a son I haven't seen since he was five. He's in his twenties now – Seth raised him." Regina's heart breaks and mends at the same time, her mouth dropping open slightly. The bitter irony of Abe's cursed memories twists in her gut: she hasn't seen Robin's son since he was ten; she hasn't been back to see their doppelgangers, or Roland, in far, far too long. He adds, "I know that him not knowing me is best for him, but I still miss him sometimes. I miss the things I've missed. The ways I don't get to be in his life."

Regina thinks of Henry – of the day she brought him home from Boston, ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, and of kneeling over him as poison slithered through his veins, the only way to save him impossible but impossible to resist. Of sitting next to him on that park bench after Drizella woke her up and listening to him say he'd had no mother to love him, her heart breaking but too full of love to damn him with the truth. She thinks of all the things she's wanted to say to him since but hasn't been able to – advice, or warnings, words of comfort, or just _I love you, Henry_.

She shouldn't say it, she's crossing streams, mixing her lives, but it comes out of her mouth before she can stop it: "I have a son, too. I had to give him up." Her voice thins, barely above a whisper as she admits something she's wanted to say to someone, anyone, for weeks: "And I really, really miss him, even though he doesn't know who I am."

Abe's fingers squeeze against hers, his sympathy as genuine as their sudden shared grief.

He tells her, "I'm sorry," and she gives him a wobbly smile, finally disentangling their fingers to brush her hair back from her face and wipe discreetly at the tears that have escaped to wet her cheeks.

"Thanks," she tells him softly, and, "You, too. But I know I did the best thing for him. I gave him up so he could have a good life."

So he could have any life, she thinks darkly. And he's not gone, he's here with her, she'll find a way to save him or die trying. But for now… God, does it ever hurt.

The corner of Abe's mouth turns up in a wry smirk, and he says, "Yeah, I say that, too. But do you ever feel like it's the thing you say that's supposed to make you feel better, but doesn't really do shit for how much you actually miss him?"

Regina laughs wetly, and nods. "Yeah, that sounds about right." She gestures vaguely in the direction of her no-doubt smeared mascara. "If it was really that comforting, I probably wouldn't be crying in the middle of my bar and keeping you from the Mariners."

"They'll play again," he shrugs. "And I have a hard time ignoring someone in need."

Another thing he and Robin have in common.

"In fact, it's killing me not to offer you a hug right now, but I think you might refuse me."

Every cell in her body lights up, flaring with a sort of magnetic pull that has her leaning just a little bit closer to him.

It's pathetic, but she would do just about anything to have Robin hug her pain away right now.

"Why don't you offer and find out," she challenges.

Abe grins.

"Roni, would you mind terribly if I hugged you?"

Regina grins back, and jerks her head toward the end of the bar, heading in that direction and trusting that he'll meet her there. Abe slides off his stool to follow, and Regina's heart starts to beat hard and quick. It's the tail end of the lunch rush, she has a handful of tables still, and three people at the bar; it's not at all the right time to hug it out with her cursed ex-lover, but she lets Abe fold his arms around her shoulders just the same. Her own circle around his waist loosely – if she wasn't afraid it would make her seem like a clingy idiot, she'd hold him so tightly he couldn't breathe. But this is enough, for now.

She turns her face toward his neck and gets suckerpunched by the scent of him – he still smells like forest. It's cologne now, she thinks. Something warm and woodsy, but there's an undertone that is familiarly _Robin_ and Regina breathes in deep to soak it in. When she sighs it all out, it feels like every muscle in her body loosens up just a little.

Robin was a good hugger; Abe is too. His hand rubs up and down her back, and they rock just a little, side to side.

She could stay here for hours. It beats the hell out of talking to her cat or constantly lying to Henry.

She could stay here for hours, but she won't.

Fifteen seconds, she tells herself. Fifteen seconds, and no more. She'll close her eyes here against him for fifteen seconds and take the comfort he's offering her, and then she'll pull away like anyone who has only known this man for a matter of days would do.

She doesn't even make it to ten before Henry's voice interrupts them, "Hey, Roni, I— oh. Sorry."

She can hear her son's smile even with her back to him, and she feels that same pinch of guilt and embarrassment that she'd felt when he'd caught her smooching Robin in the back hallway at Granny's all those years ago.

As they disentangle, she breathes a warning, "Nobody knows about my son," and sees Abe nod as she turns to face Henry. Abe's hand finds hers long enough for a reassuring squeeze—their secrets are safe with each other—and then he's moseying back toward his stool as Henry grins slyly at her.

"Don't let me interrupt," he insists, but then he seems to get a proper look at her and his grin dims a little. "Everything okay?"

"Right as rain," she insists with what she hopes is a proper smile, and she feels another little spurt of nerves as she gestures from Abe to Henry and back again. "Abe, this is my friend Henry. Henry this is Abe, he's…"

She pauses, unsure how to label this man she loves so dearly who only knows her as the woman who pours his drinks and rings up his lunch orders.

"A regular," she finishes. He comes in every day; he's earned the title.

Abe smirks, offers a hand to Henry and says, "I'm a friend."

"Friends are good," Henry nods, adding, "It's good to meet you," and then asking Roni for his usual beer. As she pulls it, she hears him say, "So the Mariners are sucking a little less today, I see," hears Abe snort a laugh in response and say something about how dismal the last few games have been.

Regina smiles and listens to them talk, her two biggest loves, sitting obliviously side by side in the midst of this lie they're all living.

It hurts a little more. And a little less.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Author's Note:** Thank you all for your lovely reviews on this story! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. I also wanted to give you a friendly reminder that all my stories are updated on Ao3 a day or two before they are here, so if you wanna be first to read, make sure you're following me there as well. Also, I'll be posting a new installment of the Oblivion-verse soon, **on Ao3 only** , due to the issues we've had here on FFnet with M vs MA-rated fics. All future updates to the Oblivion verse will be Ao3 exclusive._

 _Without further ado... enjoy chapter 4 of Noise._

* * *

It takes him two more days to ask her out.

She doesn't know why she's waiting on him, but it feels important that she does. She doesn't want to spook him, doesn't want to push him too fast just because she is aching so deeply to connect with him again.

It should be his choice, she's decided. She just wishes he'd chosen a better day.

She is in _a mood_ today. Had slept restlessly and woken up surly. The temperature has dipped, and it's been grey and drizzly all day. She stepped in a hairball as she's stumbled her way blearily to the bathroom this morning, had a server call out fifteen minutes _into_ their scheduled shift, and has already dropped two glasses.

So it's safe to say that Regina is not her usual _sunny_ self when she hands Abe his check after a particularly laconic lunch hour.

He fishes a few bills from his wallet as she pours someone a Sierra Mist, and just as she's reaching for a straw, she hears her name.

"Roni?"

"Hmm?"

If he's going to ask her what's wrong, she's not in the mood. She'd already answered his earlier _Rough day?_ with a terse _Yes._

But what he says is, "I was wondering if maybe I could take you to dinner," and it catches her so off-guard that she just blinks and scowls up at him.

"You just ate," she points out dumbly.

Abe only smiles, and says, " _After_ your shift. I'd like to take you out."

"Oh," she says, and, "Right." Here they are, then. She feels a little flutter of excitement war with the dark cloud in her chest, but realizes quickly that it's going to be thoroughly trounced by the circumstances of her shitty day: "Well, I own this place, so there is no 'after my shift.' Not right now anyway – I'm short-staffed today, so I'm on til close."

Why couldn't he have asked her out _yesterday_ , when Jacinda was here until close and business was slow?

"A very, very late dinner then," Abe tries again, as unflappable as Robin had always been. (She sees his hand extending two different glasses of whiskey her way, and then holding up a nicked letter as he made jokes about her murdering him with a fireball like she'd done to so many people before. Abe has rucked his henley up nearly to his elbows today, and that fateful lion mocks her.)

"Bar closes at two," she tells him regretfully. "I'll be here until at least three, sometimes four."

Abe's head dips in something reminiscent of a nod, resigned, and he sighs, "So no, then."

"I didn't say no," she insists, because it's not _that_ , not really. "I just figure most people have turned into a pumpkin by then." He smirks a little at that, and Regina finds herself smiling too, for the first time since before that squishy hairball under her bare foot this morning. This is what she's wanted, what she's been waiting for, so she tries to shake off her dark cloud and offers, "Dinner's hard for me. But maybe breakfast sometime – or brunch; I don't really do mornings anymore."

"Well, no, not when you keep the hours of a vampire," Abe teases her; all's back to normal, it seems.

She sasses him back, "Or a dedicated small-business owner."

Abe nods with false deference, shoving his wallet back into his pocket as he asks, "Can I take you to breakfast then?"

"Alright," Regina agrees; her storm clouds are rapidly dissipating. "When?"

When he suggests, "Tomorrow?" she has some ridiculously juvenile romantic notion that he can't wait another day to see her outside this bar and it's enough to let a little ray of sunshine peek through and rain down on her.

Maybe she was wrong, and this was _exactly_ the right day to ask her out.

"Tomorrow's good," she tells him with an easy smile.

"I know a place," he says. "I'll text you the address if you'll give me your number."

He fiddles with something on his phone as she asks him, "What time?"

"I'll text you that too," he teases, passing her the phone with a new contact open and waiting.

But he doesn't text her.

She gives him her number, puts it into his phone, and she's perfectly confident that he'll send her the details of where he wants to meet her, and when. But he doesn't.

She spends the whole rest of her shift having to yank her mind away from memories of breakfast in her kitchen, Roland with sticky cheeks, Robin making the coffee black and thick and strong, Regina cooking eggs and French toast for them, for Henry. After they'd come back to New York, he'd been around more often than not – they'd both been terribly reluctant to be parted from each other again (little did they know what fate had in store for them).

Somewhere in the middle of the dinner rush, she has a sudden memory – his hands on her hips, a smile on his face, _Why don't you come back to my camp and let me cook you breakfast?_

She hadn't gone that morning, but they'd gotten good at breakfast, she and Robin. So a breakfast date seems fitting. Right.

She's looking forward to it. (She's looking at her phone every quarter hour or so, waiting for a text from him, waiting for details. It's after dinner before she realizes she never got _his_ number, and he never offered it, did he?)

By the end of the night her mood has shot right back down to the dark place it had been before lunch. Further, even. Her heart is aching, her eyes burning with tears that want to gather; she holds them back by sheer force of will. If there was any hope of them meeting for breakfast, he'd have to tell her the when and where before he went to bed, and it's the middle of the night.

So clearly that's not happening.

He's walked out of her life just like that, and she'll probably never see his face again, not if he's standing her up for breakfast.

He probably changed his mind, decided he didn't want someone as moody as her. Someone as needy as her – someone who cries to a stranger about losing the child that's right in front of her and hugs him like an idiot, or who makes excuses about why she can't just have dinner with him when she's been wanting to have another meal with this man for more than fifteen fucking years.

She's such an idiot. She should have just said yes and figured something out. Fuck this stupid bar, and Veronica Cope and stray cats she didn't even want in the first place. Robin being back is real, and so much more important than a life that's all noise, and lies, and… and… loneliness.

For a second she wonders what force in the universe was responsible for even bringing him to her bar in the first place? Hasn't she suffered enough in this life without being yanked around, like this, by _him_? She's done horrible things, but she has been trying for two decades to make up for them, and this is the thanks she gets? A poisoned son who can't remember her, and a lover who doesn't know her name and can't even be bothered to keep a date with her.

(The alternative is that something has happened to him. An accident, something painful, he's been ripped from her just as soon as she managed to grasp at another chance with him. She doesn't let herself dwell on the possibility, because if she does she'll start thinking words like "karma", and she paid Archie Hopper far too much in the years after Robin's death to let herself go down that road of self-loathing again.)

When she hears the door open at five minutes to close, the bar already cleared out for the night (her thunderous mood had probably helped with that), she barks, "We're closed! You missed last call," without even looking up at her new customer.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket and she reaches for it embarrassingly fast. She freezes for a second with her hand there, thinks, _Asshole_ , and _It's probably not even him_ , but she fishes it from her pocket anyway. Just to make sure he's not dead.

It's from Abe: _Beth's. 3 or 4am. Whenever you finish up here._

As she scowls at the words, it occurs to her that her new customer hasn't answered her. _Whenever you finish up_ ** _here_** , she reads again, and her hearts starts to pump hard.

She turns and there he is, sitting at her bar again, holding up his phone with a smug smile on his face. "I don't need a drink; just a place to park myself while I wait."

What an asshole.

What a complete and utter asshole, she thinks to herself, her emotions a riotous tangle in her chest.

"You're a jerk," she tells him; she should probably be more embarrassed than she is by how hurt she sounds.

And Abe, that asshole, he just smirks at her. Says, "Did you think I'd stood you up?"

"Do you think you're cute?" she questions. It comes out angrier than she'd meant, but no angrier than she is, so she rolls with it. "Because that wasn't cute, that felt really shitty, and you already know I was having a shitty day to begin with."

He has the decency to look apologetic at that, his face falling from a smirk to a soft frown. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that – I just figured if I sent it any earlier, you'd say 'not tonight.' And I thought this was a sort of romantic gesture that might make you smile."

"Well, it wasn't. And I did say 'not tonight,'" she reminds him tartly, reaching for a rag resting nearby and using it to scrub at an already clean spot on the countertop.

"Because you thought three AM was too late for me," he points out. "But it's not."

"Maybe it's too late for me," she volleys at him. "Did that occur to you? I've been here since eleven AM; maybe I just want to go home and sleep and not have _breakfast_ in the middle of the night with some jerk who thinks—"

"Can you come around here?" he interrupts, and her gaze smacks up to meet his. His jaw is set that way it does when he's frustrated. "Or me around there – somewhere that there's not several feet of bartop between us if we're going to argue?"

"You might wish there was several feet of bartop between us if we're gonna argue," she mutters. But still, she sighs and tosses down the rag she'd been using to wipe the bar, stalking around from behind it until she can slide onto the stool two down from his.

Close enough to argue properly, but far enough away to glower.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, sincerely, one hand reaching out toward her. She stares at it, but doesn't take it, and Abe admits, "I did think it was cute. I thought it would be very clever to show up here, now, and ask you to let me buy you breakfast."

"I thought you'd ditched me," she tells him, shaking her head, her arms tucked firmly across her chest. "I thought 'What an idiot; he's obviously not that into you, he didn't even give you his—'"

"I am that into you," he cuts her off again. "I promise. And now you have my number, assuming that's where that sentence was going. So let me take you out."

"Y'know, I find I'm not really in the mood right now."

"Let me make it up to you. Please. You've been here all day, right? And you said you're short-staffed, so I'm guessing you scrimped on your breaks, right?"

She did. She's starving. She worked straight through from dinner to close, too busy stewing in her mounting hurt feelings to feel like eating.

But that's not the point; he should _know_ better. (He shouldn't, he doesn't know her. But he'd _scared_ her; she'd thought he was never going to walk back through that door and she'd have lost him all over again just as he was so mysteriously returned to her.)

She's angry. Angry, and hurt, and she still feels like an idiot. But this is Robin, she reminds herself. Her Robin, her supposed-to-be-dead-but-somehow-sitting-here-with-breath-in-his-lungs Robin.

She can be mad at him over pancakes just as easily as she can anywhere else, she decides, giving him a short nod and a curt, "Fine." Abe lets out a relieved breath, and Regina tips her chin up and says, "But I need to at least prep the deposit before I lock up for the night, and I can't do that with a patron in the bar, so you have to wait outside."

It'll give her a few minutes to pull herself together, at the very least.

His brows lift slightly, surprised; Roni's lift to meet them, a challenge.

 _Weren't expecting that, were you?_

But Abe nods, pushing away from the bar and telling her, "I'll be outside then. When you're ready."

Regina watches his back as he walks to the door and hopes she hasn't just made a terrible mistake.

 **.::.**

It only takes her ten minutes to decide she's a colossal, absolute idiot. Truly, a moron.

So incredibly, incredibly stupid.

It's September; it's chilly. It's been drizzly and damp all day. And she'd just expected him to stand out there and wait for her?

He's not _Robin_. Robin would wait for her, would probably stand in the snow for an hour if she'd needed him to, but this isn't Robin Hood, it's Abe Warner, and she has no idea what _he_ will do.

He might decide she's just not worth this and go. She might walk out that door and find nothing but a dreary late night to greet her, and then she'll have to text _him_. And grovel. Or at the very least, charm him into thinking her show of temper and pettiness was due to long hours at work and not an actual flaw in her character.

(It would all be so much easier if she could just tell him "You're my soulmate, and you were dead, so if I overreact a bit, please excuse me…")

She doesn't know why she's planting her flag in this; she wants to spend time with him. But that's not true, is it? She wants to spend time with Robin, and this man, this person, this isn't Robin. Robin would have the good sense not to toy with her emotions over something this important. (Robin would have known it was important.)

But he's what she's got, and she's all out of magic pollen to force him out of this curse, so she's just going to have to make do.

She really does need to get the money squared away, though; that wasn't a lie. So she counts it quickly, fills out a sloppy deposit slip, and binds it all together before tossing it into the safe along with her tips for the night. She'll sort the rest out tomorrow.

She'll do all of that in the morning (or in five minutes if she's managed to screw all of this up already).

Tonight, she's just going to lock it all up, grab her purse and Roni's flowered leather jacket and put poor Abel Warner out of his misery.

(Please, God, let him still be there.)

She'd locked him out, so she has to flip the bolt on the door, and when she steps outside, she finds it's not really _raining_ , per se, but there's a heavy mist in the air. It's damp, and cold, and she's so stupid.

But then she hears, "That was quick," in that lovely accented voice, and everything in her middle relaxes. She blows out a breath of relief as he teases cautiously, "I was expecting you to let me stew out here for an hour or so; payment for my crimes."

"I thought about it," she lobs back, makes sure to make it just a little flirty. Casual. She even throws him a smile over her shoulder as she reaches to pull the gate down over the door.

His head falls forward a bit – he's relieved, too, it seems, a smile spreading on his face as he nods a little.

The sight of his smile is like a balm, and she doesn't have to try as hard to wrinkle her nose a little and say, "But it seemed rude."

The gate lowers with its usual rattling clatter, and Regina locks it as Abe shoves his hands into his pockets just at the edge of her peripheral vision, his shoulders rising with the action, and then settling back down.

He doesn't say anything more until she's finished locking up and stashed her keys in her purse. Not until she turns her attention back to him.

But when he does speak, he steps closer to her, reaches tentatively for her biceps, curling his fingers lightly around them when she doesn't pull back or stiffen or do anything but try desperately to keep herself from melting at his touch.

He's all sincere blue eyes and that soft reassuring voice when he tells her, "I should have texted. I should have told you tomorrow morning at 10 or noon or whatever, and then shown up now and surprised you."

It's so very _him_ that she can't find it in herself to hold onto that fearful anger anymore.

"That _might_ have been cute," she admits, the corner of her mouth curving upward.

His gaze flicks down to her mouth, and she must be doing the same, because she's very aware of the way his tongue swipes out to wet his lips before he tells her, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she shakes it off, blows out a breath and admits, "I'm being an idiot. I just… had a bad day, and was looking forward to breakfast tomorrow, that's all. And I thought maybe you weren't."

"I asked _you,_ " he reminds her, and, well, that's true.

Regina shrugs a little, and tells him, "People change their minds. They say things in the moment and then regret them."

"I doubt I'd ever regret making plans with you," he says with a smile, stepping just a little bit closer, until she can't keep from reaching for him, too, her fingers hooking in the pockets of his coat. "I've been waiting to ask you out for days."

"Days?" she questions, with a doubtful lift of her brows.

"Mmhmm," he nods. "I wanted to ask you the day we met – I wanted to ask you the moment you turned around – but I thought my chances would be better if I hung around a bit more and flirted with you. Convinced you I was charming."

She laughs a little, shaking her head. He's always been good at _that_.

And then he adds, "I don't even like the Mariners, I stayed for the whole game that first day because the thought of leaving was… off-putting."

The admission makes her heart squeeze and then pump hard, and Regina can't help grinning at the idea that while she was sneaking glances at him, he must have been doing the same to her. It makes her feel such unbridled _affection_ for him; the need to kiss him is suddenly overwhelming, rising up in her like a tidal wave just the way it had the very first time. And he's here now, and alive, so she closes the distance between them without thinking and presses her lips gently to his.

The curse holds, thank God, but she's not even thinking about that yet. She's not thinking at all.

Abe lets out a quiet _Mm_ , and shifts a hand to the back of her neck. His fingers are chilly and she shivers; he pulls her closer, his other arm sliding around her back.

She's been afraid that it might be disappointing, a repeat performance of kissing Robin of Locksley in her vault all those years ago. But it's not. Kissing Abe is like coming home, like fitting the final piece into a puzzle after it's gone missing for weeks. It feels real, and vibrant, and she's hyper aware of every bit of it – his torso against hers, the way they fit; the soft press of his lips against hers and the slight roughness where they're a little chapped; the way his nose bumps lightly against the side of hers.

It's everything she's been missing since the moment she watched his body fall and knew she'd never get to do this again. Regina thanks whatever power might be up there that their eyes are closed; the tears that prickle against the backs of her eyes will get lost in her lashes and go unnoticed.

They don't let it deepen, but they don't let it end either, trading soft pecks in the drizzly night air. A half dozen or so, at least, before she convinces herself to draw back and look at him. She watches his eyes flutter open, waits for him to smile, and then she whispers, "I've wanted to do _that_ since the day we met. Take me to breakfast, Abe."

He chuckles lowly, his hands sliding over her back until he can shift his reach to her fingers and give them a squeeze, then weave them with his.

"With pleasure."


	5. Chapter 5

They end up at an all-night diner, twin cups of coffee on the table between them as they wait for their food. It's nothing fancy – formica tabletops and vaguely sticky menus; the whole place feels a bit like it could use a good scrubbing. But there's nowhere she'd rather be than here with this man, watching him rip open three packets of sugar and dump them into his cup.

That's new, she thinks. Robin had liked his coffee black, and so strong it could walk away on its own.

She takes a sip of her own now that she's added a dash of cream and a half pack of Splenda; it's not great coffee. It's not _bad_ coffee, but it's not great. She remembers liking it more when she'd only had Roni Cope in her head. She'd known this place – it was open late, and the portions were obscene; Roni had been able to make an omelette and hash browns last for three meals.

But Regina knows better. This place is no Granny's Diner, no Storybrooke Coffee Co. She misses home suddenly and fiercely; misses apple pancakes, and lasagna, and those steak fries, and the sour cream apple crumb pie in the fall. She misses that clocktower, and her office, and a town where everyone knew who she was, for better or worse. She misses her family.

Regina swallows down the homesickness with a deep swig of coffee and grimaces a little at the heat of it racing along her throat.

"You don't like it," Abe winces, but she's quick to reassure, shaking her head and telling him, _It's just hot_.

"I swallowed too much too soon, that's all." She wraps her hands around the cup and lies, "It's good."

He nods, apparently convinced (Robin was better at seeing through her; she should really stop comparing them), and says, "Good. I'd hate to think I took you on a crappy first date."

Regina smiles at that – genuinely so. He's given her this lopsided smirk, one of his flirtatious ones, but she can see the way it's rimmed with nerves. He really likes her, this Abe. Wants to do right by her on their little impromptu midnight date.

It's been a long time since she last felt that from someone, and Regina tells herself to soak it in. Enjoy it. It's not every day one gets a chance to be wooed by one's soulmate _again_. (She's had so many more chances than most people; she should be grateful. It's what she's been telling herself for years – that she should be grateful they got to fall in love so many different times. That she'd been lucky; most people only get to fall for someone once. She hadn't felt very lucky with him six feet in the ground, but she'd told herself she was, all the same.)

"I'm, uh… not doing a very good job of holding your interest, am I?" he says a bit self-consciously, and Regina realizes she's been lost in thought for a minute and spaced out on him.

It's not at all what she should be doing if she wants him to have any interest in taking her out _again_ , so she tells herself to _snap out of it_ , and forces an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry," she insists. "It's not you – I'm just… tired. It was a long day, and it's late."

He nods, more of a dip of his head really, his gaze dropping to the table before it flicks up to hers and he asks, "Would you rather rain check? I'm willing to admit defeat on the romantic notion of taking you for breakfast as soon as humanly possible."

"No," Regina insists, shaking her head. "I don't want a rain check; I want to get to know Abel Warner. But I may need you to forgive a yawn or two."

As if on cue, she feels one rising, and has to cover her mouth with her hand as her jaw stretches wide.

Abe is smiling at her when it ends, one of those warm, affectionate smiles that used to last her for days.

"Did you know your nose does this sort of scrunchy thing when you yawn?" he tells her. Adding, "It's cute."

"Yeah, really cute," Regina scoffs doubtfully, lifting her coffee and hiding her flattered smile behind the rim of her mug. "It's been a while since I've been on a first date, but I'm pretty sure yawning your way through it isn't the best way to convince someone you're having a good time."

Abe chuckles, a low, rumbling sort of laugh that has always warmed her straight through the middle. "Well, it's been a while for me too, so I don't know, maybe things have changed. Maybe yawning is all the rage these days," he says with a teasing glint in those blue eyes. "Besides, I had the luxury of a nap; you didn't."

"Lucky you," she murmurs, starting to feel the heavy weariness of her long day fight against the giddy lightness of being in his presence again.

"Did you work open to close?" he wonders, and she nods as she swallows. "Is that typical for you? All day like that?"

Regina shrugs, and tells him, "That depends on how many people I have working for me. On slow days, I sometimes work the full day – it saves me on payroll, and it's fewer people to tip out at the end of a shift. If it's the weekend, I have more help to handle the extra traffic, and sometimes I'll come in later. I usually close, though – I like to handle the money myself."

He listens intently, head cocked just so. "So we have a lot of brunches and lunches in our future, then," he says with a confidence so familiar that it soothes a bit of the persistent ache in her chest.

"And diner dates in the wee hours," she adds teasingly. "If I don't fall asleep in my food."

Abe shrugs, and says, "I'll give you a little kick if you do; nobody will ever have to know."

It's a silly little flirtation, but she finds herself giggling at it. She's not a giggler by any means, and Roni hadn't been either, but she hears the sound rise up out of her, and, well… it was definitely a giggle. Her cheeks flush slightly in embarrassment, and while she can't hide _them_ in her coffee, she can sure pretend.

It's getting better with every sip, she thinks. Still not great, but… better.

Their conversation is interrupted by the food arriving – and it is _a lot_ of food.

She hasn't had much of an appetite since Drizella brought her into this nightmare, but tonight she's ravenous. She'd ordered a breakfast burrito and hash browns, and a giant glass of OJ. Roni had rarely met a breakfast burrito she didn't like, and Regina finds that she's developed an odd craving for them, too. This one is huge, and she can't decide whether she should try to tackle it with knife and fork and save a little dignity, or pick it up and dive right in.

Roni wouldn't have been caught dead eating it with a knife and fork; Regina was raised under strict rules of manners and decorum.

She picks it up anyway. Fuck it. Abe had ordered something called a Triple Bypass omelette, and his plate is covered in the meaty, cheesy, eggy monstrosity, along with a pile of hashbrowns and a little stack of rye toast. He's sure as shit not going to judge her for a breakfast burrito.

She's taken her first bite and started to chew when Abe picks their conversation back up, asking her, "So when did you decide you wanted to own a bar?" before he forks up a bite of omelette for himself.

She can't very well answer him like this, and she gives him a look of consternation as she rushes to chew and swallow.

"Sorry," he manages around his mouthful of egg and bacon and cheese, and, well, she did always have better manners than him, didn't she?

A bit of bean and cheese drips off her burrito and lands on her plate, and Regina can't help but shake her head a little and laugh.

"This isn't very graceful," she says to him. "Maybe a breakfast burrito wasn't such a great date idea."

Abe looks at her, deadpan, swallowing his mouthful and reminding her, "My omelette has _six_ eggs in it. I think we left graceful a few blocks back."

Regina laughs, and admits, "Fair enough," setting down her burrito for a second and reaching for her fork instead, pushing her hash browns a little as she answers his question: "I worked in a bar for a while when I was younger. Too young, actually. I lied about my age. But I liked the environment, being around people, talking to them, helping them with their problems. I loved the regulars. My mother died and left me some money, so…"

Regina finishes her story (not hers, Roni's, but it _feels_ like hers) with a little shrug, and scoops up a bite of those hash browns.

"I'm sorry," Abe tells her sincerely.

Regina shakes her head slightly, and says, "We hadn't spoken in a long time. I got kicked out when I was pretty young."

His lips curl into that familiar smirk, as he teases her, "Troublemaker, were you?"

"Strong-willed," she corrects. Cora had always said that about her—Regina—that she was too strong-willed for her own good. Not when it counted, apparently, considering the road her life had taken. But that's not the life story she's telling, so she pushes past the static of her own childhood and focuses on Roni's: "And unwilling to be bullied by the man who married my mom. I wouldn't play by his rules, so I didn't get to stay. She and I didn't talk much after that. I don't know if that made it better or worse, but… nothing really changed when she was gone, you know?"

Rhonda Cope-Saylor's death had been a surprise, but not nearly as much as the check that had shown up once her will was read. Roni had hated her step-father down to her bones, but there were days she'd hated her mother more, for caving to him. For choosing Sal over her. She'd never expected a single red cent from either of them, and yet there it had been. An inheritance. And a letter – an apology for all the things that Roni had resented her mother for in the first place.

It had been too little, too late as far as she'd been concerned—the damage was done, and fuck her mother for being too cowardly to say any of it until she was gone.

But she'd wanted a better life for her daughter, and so she'd given her in dollars the support she hadn't given her in any other meaningful way.

It hadn't been much, but it had been enough to put a payment down on the bar. So in a way, it had been everything, Regina supposes.

Not enough to quell the burn of resentment that still flares under her breastbone, but she reminds herself she has no right to that – none of it ever happened anyway. It's just a story. Just noise.

What's real is the man in front of her, curse-frazzled as he is. His concern is real, the slight narrowing of his eyes and that little spark of indignation he's always worn for anyone who had done Regina wrong—those are real.

"She let him push her own daughter out of the house?" he questions, and Regina picks up her burrito again with a nod.

"Literally," she tells him, leaning into the noise because fuck it, she's never really gotten to _tell_ this story, not in any memory that actually existed. "He manhandled me and a duffle bag of my things right out the door. I could come back home when I was willing to be a 'good little girl.' And I never was, so… I was on my own."

"Where did you stay?" he wonders as she takes a bite and chews.

When she finishes, she tells him, "Here and there. With friends when I could. A shelter, now and then. Sometimes a… comfy park bench."

"Yeah, they're never really _that_ comfy though, are they?" he asks knowingly, and she feels a sudden ripple of kinship she has no right to. Regina has spent very few nights without a place to call home, but Roni… Roni has spent quite a few, and the curse weaves through her mind, has her giving him a quiet, understanding smile and nod. Has her feeling like they have a little more in common, even though they really don't, at all. (But then, they never really did, and it never mattered, did it?)

"You too, huh?"

"I, uh…" He glances down at his omelette (he's making remarkably good progress through the massive thing), giving his fork an anxious little twirl and avoiding her gaze when he admits, "I spent a little time in prison."

He had—the real him—from time to time. It never lasted long, from the way Robin told it, but he had made it into a sheriff's custody more than once. Abe glances up at her expecting judgement, but he doesn't get it. Everyone has a past—she knows that better than most—and besides, it's probably all a lie anyway.

He seems more comfortable once he discovers she's not shying away from his truth; he takes a breath and says, "I went from jail to a halfway house for a few weeks, to… a couple of park benches, yeah. They don't really send you out into the world with gainful employment and savings to live off of. And I didn't like the halfway house; it never felt right."

"I never did well with group settings," she agrees, and then her curiosity gets the better of her: "How long were you in prison?"

Abe forks up a bite of hash browns, waiting to answer until he's swallowed them. When he does, it sends goosebumps flaring over her skin: "Fifteen years."

"What'd you do?" she asks, trying not to sound as rattled as she feels. It's the curse; it has to be. It boxed up all those years he was gone, remade them into a sentence for some fictional crime. Still, she can feel every hair on her arms standing up.

He's still not looking at her, and it occurs to her that she's probably poking at something sensitive, and personal. It's a _first date_ and she's asking for his record. But she needs to know, it itches beneath her skin, the not knowing.

"I nearly killed a man," he tells her

"Oh." Regina sobers suitably; Abe continues to avoid her gaze. "Why?"

She's not prepared for him to answer, "He tried to kill the woman I loved. I couldn't let him." Her hands tighten around her glass, and she finds she's glad he's not looking. Instead he's lifting his coffee, speaking nearly into it as he confesses, "So I, uh… beat him nearly to death, with a pipe. Felony assault." He looks up at her, then, finally, and she can see the trepidation and shame under the faux-boldness as he asks, "You wanna run now?"

Oh, if only he knew the blood that was on her hands.

She thinks of Leopold and levels the playing field: "I was raped when I was a teenager. Repeatedly, by the same guy. I poisoned him, and got away with it." She's mixing her truths again, swirling Regina's life into the static of Roni's, but she wants someone to _know_ her. To see her amidst the lies she's woven around herself. "Do _you_ wanna run now?"

The night she'd told Robin about her marriage to the king in hushed tones, and with more honesty than she'd ever been allowed to lend the words before, had been one of the most intimate nights of her life. She'd been afraid it would change what he thought of her, but it hadn't. Not in any of the ways she'd feared, anyway. What she hadn't bargained for was that her good, pure, sweet soulmate would hear her say she wasn't sorry for the king's murder, not even a little bit, and tell her he'd have done it himself given the chance.

She doesn't know what the man in front of her will say, and she doesn't realize how nervous she is that he might feel differently until he looks her in the face and tells her, "No," and then, softly, "Good for you."

She sucks in a relieved breath, lets it out, and says, "You, too." They keep their voices low, private. They're talking about murder in public, so that's probably… wise. But she doesn't think that's why. The low tones aren't to spare anyone else's ears, or even, she thinks, to keep her from taking the fall for a crime that never happened in this realm anyway. It's just that some things are private. Personal. Nobody else needs to hear the answers to questions like the one she asks next: "Were you ever… sorry?"

"No," Abe answers quietly. "He was a psychopathic bastard; he deserved it." His head tilts just a little to one side, and he asks, "You?"

"Never," Regina tells him without hesitation. There's so much blood on her hands, and so much of it needless. So many lives snuffed out that she regrets. But not that one. She's never once, not for a moment, been sorry that bastard succumbed to the viper. "Everyone thought he was so great, but I knew better. And I couldn't stand the sight of his fucking face anymore. So. I did it." It's not entirely the truth, but it's close enough. "And I was free."

For a moment it's quiet. Abe taps his fork on the edge of his plate softly, then takes another bite of his omelette. She's not all that hungry anymore, but she takes a bite of her burrito anyway, just to keep up appearances. She can tell something is on Abe's mind; he's watching her, brow knit slightly. Finally, he swallows, and asks stiltedly, "Was it… your step-dad?"

"No." It's an easy assumption to make, she supposes, but she shakes her head and says, "No, it was… a friend of my mother's." The words are ash on her tongue, scorching in their veracity. It's one wound that's never fully healed – the secrets they kept, the way she'd paid for her mother's betrayal. She wonders sometimes if Leo would have been better to her if she hadn't been Cora's. Or if her mother had had the decency not to marry her off to a man who was older than her own father. "She never saw him for what he was. And nobody ever looked twice at me when he died. So you may be an almost-murderer, but I'm an actual one."

"Some people the world is better off without," Abe tells her, with the quiet certainty Robin used to reserve for things like how sure he was that they could make things work, or that she really was more soft-hearted than she let on, or that Roland could sleep without Monkey if he truly tried.

It makes something in her chest ache.

"Yeah," she says softly, and then it's just silence while they each take another bite and chew slowly. Nothing like a little reminiscing about _snuffing people out of existence_ (or nearly so, in his case) to get a first date off to a rip-roaring start…

When she finally swallows, Regina says, "Sorry – I brought this way down, didn't I? I just didn't want you to feel judged for having a record. Everyone has a past, and sometimes it's ugly. But I believe that… all that matters is who we are now."

He'd taught her that, all those years ago. Him, and Henry. And Snow, David, Emma… But when she thinks of people who'd had that undying faith in her capacity for change and goodness, he tops the list. He's the only one who never doubted her. The only one who was never scared.

He smiles at her now, and says, "I like that."

Regina smiles back.

"So," she says, reaching for her juice, and asking, "who are you now?"

Abe lets out a deep sigh and admits, "I'm still figuring that out, to be honest. I haven't been a free man for very long."

That piques her interest. If she's right, then his prison sentence was the time that he was… elsewhere. Wherever he was, before he was here again. If he can remember when he left there, maybe it will give some insight into when he came back to the land of the living.

"When did you get out?"

"Just a few months ago, really," he tells her. "I guess you could say I'm still finding my feet."

Regina wants to push for something more specific, but she's already pried enough. She'll see him again, she's increasingly sure – she can figure out the exact date somehow. For now, she knows it was around the time the curse was cast. At least he hasn't been stuck in this place without her for years.

But if he's only been out for a few months, and he spent a few weeks at a halfway house, and managed to get familiar with park benches… She grows suddenly concerned that he doesn't have a steady place to stay. Inviting him to stay with her would probably be a fast-track to him thinking she's nuts, but she could let him sleep at the bar, maybe, if he needed a place to crash. There's a couch in her office, and while she trusts him more than she probably should considering she doesn't _know_ him, the safe is keypad locked anyway. The worse he could do is pilfer her food and liquor.

"Where are you living?" she asks, trying for nonchalance. "You left the halfway house, so..."

"I got lucky," he says, pushing hash browns around on his plate, unearthing them from what's left of his massive omelette. "Met a couple of kids, siblings who'd just lost a roommate and were looking for a third. They didn't need much in the way of rent, and were willing to overlook my not-so-pleasant past. So I live with them."

Well, that sounds… good. Solid.

She tries not to be disappointed that she won't have the opportunity to pull him even closer to her day-to-day.

Instead she says, "That was kind of them," and takes another bite of her breakfast.

"Yeah, they're good kids," he says, adding, "Young – I don't think she's even old enough to drink, and he barely is. But they're nice."

"They sound like it."

For a moment, they eat in silence – or she does anyway; he seems to be losing steam, although with a six-egg omelette she can't blame him.

He sips his coffee, shifts a little on his side of the booth and then asks, "What about you? Do you live alone, or…?"

Regina lifts a brow, can't resist serving a little sass as she asks, "Why?"

"Just asking," he assures with a tight little smile. She regrets teasing him when he tries to reassure her with, "I'm not going to hurt you, I hope you—"

"I know," she cuts him off. "I'm not worried about that." She just told this man she's a _murderer_ to ease his discomfort; the last thing she wants to do is make him think she feels unsafe in his presence. "And yes, I do. Unless you count my cat. Just me and him, in a very tiny, pretty crappy apartment."

"Not far from the bar," he guesses correctly, adding, "Seeing as we walked. I'm guessing you didn't drive to work."

Regina shakes her head and tells him, "I hate Seattle drivers. It's not that I _can't_ drive, or that I don't ever. Just not to work. It's not worth it for such a short drive."

"You should; you leave late," he says, adding, "Streets are dangerous at night."

She thinks of mothballs and Jim Beam and blue hair.

She's doesn't need to be warned about things that go bump in the night; she's been taught that lesson the hard way.

But she's a good student, always has been; Regina reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulls out a little switchblade, then sets it on the table between them.

"I can protect myself; I'm tougher than I look."

"I suppose that's true," he says with a half-smirk, and she wonders if he's thinking of the man she killed (so many men; what would he think if he knew the truth?). She slips the knife back into her pocket, and as she does, Abe says seriously, "Still. Please be careful."

"I will."

It's a fair request to honor, she thinks, considering he believes he nearly killed the man who tried to murder her. It can't be _her_ , though, she realizes – the woman he loved. If it had been... he'd remember, he'd know her. She's been remade somehow. Warped and erased by the curse fogging his brain. Or maybe it's Marian he remembers saving? She can't help but ask, again. Can't help but poke at his sore spots, again.

"What happened to the girl?" His brow furrows slightly and she clarifies, "The one you were protecting. Did she… Was she okay?"

Recognition dawns, and he nods his head, pushes at the hash browns again as he tells her slowly, "She lived. Took my son in for a while, and then… married my brother."

So definitely her, then, Regina thinks, her mind straying to her other half, married to his mirror image. It's so odd, the way curses work. The way they hold themselves intact and fog up the mirrors of your mind.

All she says, though, is, "Oh."

"Yeah," Abe mutters dryly.

"That's a little… awkward." To say the least.

"A little, yeah," he sighs, and suddenly the edge of resentment under his words seems to disappear, replaced by a sort of resigned acceptance as he tells her, "But they're good people, and I was gone. I don't blame them, not really."

Guilt slithers through her at _I was gone_ , and she wonders if he'd have minded if she found someone new. If he'd come back and found _her_ with Robin of Locksley, what would her Robin have thought?

"You di—nearly killed someone for her. And she just left you?"

"She hung on for a while," Abe tells her. "Visited me in prison and all that. But I was gonna be away for years. I wanted her to move on, I didn't want her to wait. I asked her to give Noah—my son—to my family and get on with her life without me, but… she loved him too much, she said. My brother lives in the UK, and she didn't want to send Noah off to a strange land all alone, so she went to help him settle in, and… stayed a while, and… feelings happened."

He looks so… calm about the whole thing. If she didn't know him as well as she does, she might buy it. But she can see the tick of his jaw, the shadows around the edge of his gaze, the way he methodically turns his coffee cup one way, the other, back.

It bothers him. (How could it not?)

"You really never blamed her?" she asks, can't help herself. She wants him to open up to her – maybe that's unfair to him, but she does.

"I was mad for a while," he admits, "but… I didn't want her to put her life on hold for me; she'd have ended up with _someone_ else either way. Seth obviously wouldn't have been my first choice, but they're a good fit—he's more like the man I used to be."

"Is that why the two of you are… estranged? Because of her?"

She doesn't expect him to smile at that, but he does, a bit ruefully. "In a manner of speaking, but not for the reasons you might think. He's the one who was pissed at _me_."

Regina's brows shoot up. She thinks _The nerve of that guy…_ before she remembers he's not real.

"I fucked up – in his eyes, anyway," Abe tells hers. "Worth it or not, I got myself thrown in jail, and he had to clean up the mess. I changed his whole life because I 'couldn't just punch the guy and be done with it.'" His shoulders lift, and fall, and he says, "Things were never the same after. For a while he sent pictures of Noah, but after a couple of years, they just stopped coming. He said he thought it was best if… we let him get on with a normal life. Not confuse him with… everything. Later."

It definitely bothers him. He's not hiding it as well now – and he hadn't bothered to hide it the other day, had he? Maybe he can live with losing her to his brother, but losing his son to his own mistakes cuts deep. (She can relate; indignant anger on his behalf slithers through her veins.)

"That's not his choice to make," she tells him, her mind screaming that Roland should have his father. (None of this is _real_ , she reminds herself. Noah isn't Roland – Roland is in the Enchanted Forest with Regina and Robin of Locksley, and the Merry Men, and Abe never lost his son to prison, _he was dead._ It's all just _noise_. Nothing more.)

"He's his legal guardian, so I think it probably is," Abe answers with a faux lightness. It falls flat when he mutters, "Unfortunately for me. But he's being raised well, and he's safe, and that's what matters."

Regina reaches across the table, her hand open in invitation; Abe takes it and she squeezes as she says, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," he squeezes back.

"Give it time, now that you're out," she says gently. "In my experience, even the worst sibling relationships can struggle back to something...workable. Even if it seems like the crimes are impossible to overcome."

She doesn't know why she's telling him this; if she's right about where the curse pulled the idea of Seth Warner, he's realms away. It's not like Abe can just make a phone call. But she feels the need to reassure him nonetheless. She wants to give him hope that someday that broken relationship can at least heal enough that he might know his son.

Abe tilts his head, his gaze warming as he says, "Something tells me you speak from experience."

"A sister," she nods, pulling her hand back and reaching for her juice. "Half. She made mistakes, and I lost everything."

"And you're good now?" he asks as she sips.

"We're better," Regina says, thinking of Zelena, of the peace they managed to settle into over the years. "Not perfect, but better."

"Well, then I suppose there's hope for me yet," Abe tells her. But he says it in the way one does when they want to appease someone. Like he doesn't believe her, but it's a nice thought.

It's taken her a long time to get here, but she knows better.

"If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that there's always hope." Regina reaches across the table again and takes the hand of a man who should be long dead, giving it a squeeze to feel the living warmth of him against her palm. "Even when you think it's gone, the universe still surprises you now and then."


	6. Chapter 6

**_Author's Note:_** _This chapter contains a scene that's been redacted for adult content. For the full version, read the story on Ao3._

* * *

He's much better at texting after that first date.

They meet for breakfast, two or three times a week. He always walks her home, and kisses her good morning, and Ladro always gives her a judgmental look for making him wait an extra hour for his can of wet food (she's started pouring him an extra bowl of kibble before she leaves for work just in case).

It's been two weeks of midnight diners or late cafe brunches when he says he wants to take her out properly. Can she get someone to cover the bar for a night, he asks. He wants to take her on a real date. (They've been on plenty of dates; she thinks maybe he wants to take her on a date without a solid end time, and she can't help be a little excited at the prospect. She misses _touching_ him – those few stolen kisses in the morning aren't enough.)

So she sweet-talks Jacinda into covering a slow Tuesday, and lets him take her to the movies. She and Robin had never gone to the movies, not once, and so Regina revels in sharing something new with Abe. Something that's theirs.

She's no closer to figuring out how to break this curse without killing Henry – but also seems no closer to accidentally breaking it with Abe. She likes him—she does—and she's made peace with the idea that she has to accept this as the way of things. For now. So she might as well try to make the best of it.

But she isn't in love with him, not yet. How can she be, when she knows the truth?

She's tried to stop comparing him to Robin (she fails, often), and to appreciate him for who he believes he is.

He likes old records, and black and white movies. Seattle dogs, and for some reason, the Red Sox.

He doesn't love that she smokes – tells her sometimes that those things will kill her, you know, and Regina just rolls her eyes. It's a bad habit, and it's not even hers, but sometimes after a long day of the buzzing static in her brain and juggling the different truths of her lives that she's told to Abe, to Henry, to everyone in this jumbled mess of a town, she just… needs something. She gets that craving, and she deserves a goddamn vice. So she's bought another pack, and another.

She'll quit when this damn curse ends, she tells herself.

But she doesn't smoke around him anymore. She curls against his side at the movies, smelling of shampoo and the good perfume she's saved up to buy, her breath minty fresh from toothpaste and mouthwash.

She doesn't feel the urge tonight anyway. Being with him like this, in the dark, it's… peaceful. For a little while, she doesn't hear the static in her brain, she just gnaws on a Red Vine and watches the images flash on the screen, feels the press of his thigh warm against hers. The way his fingers have started to trace spirals along her knee. A little higher.

A little higher.

Regina lifts her head and smirks at him; Abe is looking at the screen, feigning innocence of the way his thumb has just swept nearly to the inside seam halfway up her thigh.

She leans in just a little, until her lips brush his ear and asks, "Why am I suddenly getting the impression you brought me to the movies so we could make out?"

Abe turns, grinning, and murmurs, "Why do you think we're sitting in the back?"

And then he's kissing her, and she forgets the Red Vines, and the moving pictures, and the static.

.::.

He has roommates, she knows that, but as they stumble into his place after the movie, his lips pressing against hers again, again, again, she can't bring herself to care.

"Roni," he breathes, one hand tangled in her curls, and she wishes so desperately that he was saying her real name. She wants to hear it again on his lips, the way he'd groan it against her mouth while he kissed her, _Regina_ , whisper it into the air above her bed while she sucked him slowly, _Regi_ _ **na**_ , gasp it into her ear as he thrust deep and pressed her into the mattress, _Regina, love…_

But she can't have that, because he doesn't _know_ her (and yet somehow, he _knows_ her, his hands find her ass the way they always have, and cup, and grope, and then squeeze, and then _she's_ the one moaning. It's nearly his name, almost, she cuts it off at _Ro_ — and gasps it into _Abe—Mm!_ Regina realizes she's going to have to make sure she _thinks_ while she falls into bed with him again, and that just seems unfair).

So she shuts them both up with more kisses, presses them against his mouth, his throat, nips at his Adam's apple in a way that makes him groan (it always has, and she grins, licks to soothe the little bite). She presses a kiss to the scars at the base of his throat and murmurs, "Bedroom," and "Now," and Abe is all too happy to oblige.

He steers her left, and backward, stumbling them through the dark of his apartment until her back bumps against a door. It's ajar, so it swings open easily and then four more steps and there's a mattress beneath her, and Abe on top of her. They're a little clumsy, a little frantic as they try to scoot back onto it and shed their shoes without letting go of each other.

It thrills her that he wants her this badly, that he's as desperate to fuck her as she is to finally, finally make love to him again after so many years without. At least she's not the only one who doesn't want to put more than a breath of air between them. At least he's tugging the buttons of her cold-shoulder flannel as frantically as she is plucking at the buttons of his (green checks this time; he looks so good in green) both of them wriggling to get the offending material off of shoulders, down arms. At least she doesn't have to feel pathetic when she lets out a little moan of protest as he lifts up onto his knees to yank his t-shirt over his head.

Her protest is short-lived, though, snuffed out by the way her blood runs cold at the sight of him shirtless.

The lights are off in his room, but the blinds are open and it's not dark in this neighborhood, street lamps combining with moonlight to give them enough light to see each other. And what she sees has her breath catching.

She should have expected, should have braced herself, because more than once she's found herself unable to tear her gaze from those little silvery lines that creep up out of his collar, and she'd been afraid of exactly this, _exactly this_ , and yet seeing it… nothing could prepare her for that.

It pops out from his heart, a thick, twisting trunk and then spreading away, little electric fingers up his chest, down over his ribs, spreading along his shoulder, his arm. Like tree branches, like _electricity_ , like that menacing blue bolt that had stolen him from her. The light from the street hits the silver of the scars, making them stand out even in the dark, and she can't _breathe_.

He tosses his shirt away and starts to bend down over her again, but Regina brings a hand up to stop him. It lands smack in the center of his chest, over the nexus of the scar, and it makes her queasy to see the evidence of how he died for her shooting out from beneath her palm.

Abe glances down dumbly, and asks, "Wha—?" and then "Oh." And then he smiles at her, that flirty smirk that usually draws the same from her, because he doesn't know she's drowning in guilt and horrific memories (his body falling to the floor with a thud, the blue glow of him as he'd melted away from her forever), when he tells her, "Would you believe I got struck by lightning?"

Yes. Yes, she would.

"Did you?" she asks, because she wants to know, _needs_ to know what this version of him thinks wreaked this kind of havoc over his skin. (Was this there, before, she wonders? She'd used magic to change him for the funeral, she hadn't seen his skin, just the swirl of purple that had dressed him for his casket.)

Abe nods, sitting back a little and reaching for her thighs, still splayed around his hips (how is she supposed to have sex with him _now_?). His palms are warm as they rub up and down, from her knees to her hips and back.

"Day two in prison; freak electrical storm. I was working out in the yard, and got struck." His hand lifts to rub against the marks, and he tells her, "They're called Lichtenberg scars – the pattern electricity makes. They usually fade, but… not for me. I get to look like a badass forever – and frighten the women I take to bed without warning them, apparently."

The corner of her mouth tips up in a smirk she absolutely does not feel, her fingers tracing the scar, too, gently, reverently. She shakes her head and asks, "How are you alive?" because he's not supposed to be, this is _wrong_ , and she doesn't know _why_ he's here, how he survived this, how he came back to her.

Abe shrugs, and says, "I don't really know. Missed the heart, I guess."

He finds her fingers with his own, then, weaving them and lifting them, leaning forward and pinning them above her head as he bends down until his mouth is an inch from hers again.

"But I _am_ alive, safe and sound right here with you, and if my unfortunate disfigurement hasn't entirely killed the mood, I'd like to keep kissing you—" his lips brush hers "—and touching you—" again, again "—and…" His hips press into hers, grinding there pointedly, and he's right.

He's alive, and safe, and with her, and now more than ever she needs to feel it.

Regina tips her mouth up to his, kisses him eagerly until he moans softly for her, until one of those hands releases hers and finds its way always, always, into her hair. Her own hands are busy, flitting over his skin, stroking down over his back, his sides, threading into his hair, skimming the light beard over his jaw.

Thank God for sex.

That's all she can think as she uses every excuse she can to touch him, to clutch him closer against her, to feel the warmth of his skin under her fingertips. She can hide her hunger for him behind the guise of enthusiasm, and he'll never know she's slaking the thirst of all those years spent parched without him.

 ** _[SCENE REDACTED. FULL VERSION AVAILABLE ON AO3]_**

 **.::.**

Later, as they lie together in his bed, a blanket slung over their hips to keep out the autumn chill, she leans over and presses a kiss to the spidering scars over his heart.

She's been staring at them for several long minutes, tracing their edges with her fingers, traversing every tributary into the main flow of deadly force into his heart.

"Did it hurt?" she asks. She's always wondered. Abe won't know, but she asks anyway.

"I don't remember it, actually," he tells her. She tries not to be disappointed. "I remember being in the yard, working out. And I remember waking up in the infirmary. Sort of – that's a bit hazy. I have hazy patches. I guess my brain got a bit scrambled."

Regina chuckles once, forces the sound out with a smile that cracks. Scrambled, indeed.

She settles her head back onto his chest, his fingers finding their way into her hair as hers return to trace the consequences of her actions. Of his love for her.

He scratches lazily along her scalp and tells her, "I have dreams about it sometimes, but it's all wrong – like my brain mixes things up. I'm in this room, and it's all… black and white. Like an old movie. And there's all these trees, but it's definitely a room. There's couches and a fireplace, and lots of arguing, but I can't ever hear any of it. It's like being underwater, or like that teacher on Charlie Brown, y'know?"

Regina's heart starts to beat hard in her chest. It's not like an old movie, that black and white room with trees and a fireplace and couches. It's just her penchant for monochromatic decorating. She swallows hard, and says, "Yeah," like she isn't a moment from tears.

"And I always think 'Save her,' and then I take a step to the left, and it hits. Everything goes blue. And I turn to see who I had to save, but… I can never see her. She's right there in front of me, and I think 'I want her to be the last thing I see, I want to see her face forever.' And I do, I know I do. But when I wake up, I can never remember her face. It must be Katie, I suppose."

Regina has tucked her head down against his chest, her fingertips still tracing the marks of that awful night in her office as he tells her what he remembers, what his mixed-up brain is struggling to hold onto (or struggling to forget?) even in spite of the curse. There's no way to keep the tears from coming, so she just has to hope he doesn't see them, doesn't feel them.

Abe is still talking, telling her, "Maybe it's because I got struck right after I got there, I don't know. I thought about her a lot, then. Maybe the lightning burned it into my brain or something. Does that sound crazy?"

Regina shakes her head, and tells him as steadily as she can, "No, it doesn't."

It's wrong, but it doesn't sound crazy.

And she doesn't sound steady, not nearly as steady as she ought to – Abe may not be Robin, but he's also not stupid. His fingers find the bottom of her chin and tip it up as he asks, "Are you crying?"

Shit.

No point in denying it, but she can weave another lie between them to join all of the others.

Regina lifts her head, blinking back tears and says, "Sorry. It's just… a sad story. Dying again and again in your dreams, for some faceless woman."

"Who says I die?" he asks her, a confused frown on his beautiful face. "I got struck by lightning, and I'm still right here."

 _But you weren't_ , she thinks. _You weren't, you_ _ **died**_ _._

What she says is, "You said you wanted her to be the last thing you saw."

"Well, I suppose I thought I was dying. I must have thought it when I got struck, too, I imagine."

"I suppose."

Abe wipes the tears from her cheeks with the pad of his thumb. "Is it wrong if I'm a bit flattered the idea of my death already brings you to tears?"

She could fill oceans with the tears she's already cried over this man's death, but she forces another smile, makes this one really count, and says, "Who said I was crying over _you_? Maybe I'm just a sucker for a good tragedy."

"Nah, it was about me," he says confidently, smirking smugly at her. "You'd be devastated if I died now; the sex was that good."

Regina laughs, another few tears leaking out because, God, he doesn't have any idea what he's saying. And he can't; he'd think she's crazy. Better he think she's ridiculously emotional than absolutely insane.

"That's it," she teases back. "It's the sex, it scrambled _my_ brain. Made me all weepy and desperate for you."

"Mm," he says, tugging her lips down to his again for a smooch and then a slower, deeper kiss.

Regina presses herself as close to him as she can manage, her hand sliding up to weave into his hair.

When the kiss breaks, it's only long enough for Abe to bump the tip of his nose against hers and say, "Maybe we should do it again, and see if I can give it another jumpstart. Rattle the tears out of you."

Regina doesn't answer, just kisses him again, letting him roll her onto her back and press his weight into her from above. He's here and solid and real, and he may not be _himself_ , but if he's proven anything it's that her Robin is still in there. Somewhere under the surface, he knows her, he _remembers_.

It's not enough, but it'll do. For now.

So she lets him kiss her into the mattress, lets him kiss down her body, and back up, lets him take her again, hard and quick and she has to remind herself again and again not to cry Robin's name when she comes.

She falls asleep with her head on his chest again, lulled by the steady lubdub of his beating heart, her fingertips still tracing those spreading scars.


	7. Chapter 7

She misses Maine.

Misses the peaceful quiet of her back porch. The rocker she'd had there, and the way she'd take her coffee out in the mornings when the weather allowed it. She'd sit and watch the sky grow light, watch the dew burn off the grass, listen to the birds wake up, and smell the flowers in her garden just on the other side of the rail.

It's just shy of six AM, and Regina is perched on Abe's fire escape, one of his flannel shirts wrapped over her own flannel shirt, her jeans zipped but not buttoned, her toes chilly and bare. She'd skipped coffee; she didn't want to wake anyone.

Instead, she'd tapped a cigarette out of the light blue pack in her purse, lit it up and watched the neon lights blink out and the hazy rays of morning try to rise above the neighboring buildings.

A garbage truck rumbles by below, picking up the trash piled high on the sidewalk. Regina inhales another lungful of smoke (she'll quit after _this_ pack, she really will – she will not start smoking now, in her 80s), grateful that she can't smell the stink of the refuse up here on the fifth floor.

She'd rather have the sweet scent of her hydrangeas in her nose than tobacco, but she'll take tobacco over marinating trash any day.

She doesn't know why she's out here except that she'd woken in that bed, with Abe's arm slung across her, and hadn't been able to fall back asleep. Too much noise in her head. In her heart. Too deep an ache to be lying there beside him, naked and curled together, and to have him not know her, not properly anyway.

It had weighed heavily on her, dragged her mood down, down, down, until she'd had to get up. It was either that, or risk him waking to find her crying in the dark with no possible explanation for him as to why.

But she hadn't wanted to just _leave_ , like this meant nothing to her. To Roni Cope.

So here she is, wiping the occasional stray tear from her cheek as she smokes American Spirit after American Spirit on his fire escape.

Smoking is stupid. Sitting outside in the cold just so she can smoke is _stupid_. How do people do this in Alaska? How do they not freeze?

When another body climbs out the window, she doesn't even look. It's Abe, she assumes.

But the legs that dangle over the edge are longer than his, and when she turns her head, the dimpled smile she gets comes from a face covered in much darker stubble – one of Abe's roommates, she realizes. This man's eyes are so brown they're nearly black, and his hair is floppy and unkempt, a pair of chunky-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He's younger than Robin. Younger than Henry even, she thinks, by the look of him (but then she'd known that; Abe had told her). There's something familiar about him, something she can't place. But then, with three identities in her head, two curses, several kingdoms, that does happen from time to time.

"I thought you might like some coffee," he tells her, settling a mug between them on the metal (she realizes then that he'd brought two with him, somehow managed to juggle them out the window without spilling).

Regina smiles at him, says, "Thank you," and lifts her cigarette slightly. "This isn't bothering you, is it? I didn't wake you? I should have closed the window."

He looks at it for a second, and she can see the little look of disapproval pinch his lips (he and his roommate have that in common, at least, even with the age gap), but he says, "No, you're fine. I'm always up with the sun. It reminds me of home."

Regina smiles at the sentiment; can't help it.

"Me, too," she tells him, and then she takes a deep drag on the cigarette. He may say he doesn't mind, but she thinks that wasn't entirely true, so she'll spend it quickly and snuff it out.

When she's mid-exhale, he says, "My name's Roland, by the way," and she chokes.

She'd gasped when she'd heard it, sucked smoke back toward her lungs in a way she was unprepared for, and her body had reacted by forcefully reversing course. So now she's sitting here, coughing in a way that barks a little bit, her throat raw, her eyes stinging, the cigarette fumbled from her fingers and fluttering down like a maple seed to the concrete below.

Roland's hand – and of _course_ he's Roland, she should have seen it in those dimples and dark eyes and that tug of familiarity, but she hasn't seen him since he was ten, she wasn't prepared for him to be a _man_ – settles on her back and rubs soothingly as she fights to draw a normal breath again, one that doesn't hitch and revolt and send her into another coughing fit.

"So you're awake, then," he says beside her, and Regina turns wide eyes to take him in. He's smirking at her, dimples popping just like his father's, the same tilt to his mouth, the same tickled-pink glint in his eyes, and Regina breaks into a sob she has to muffle with her hand before she can even get out an answer to his question.

It's all the confirmation he needs; that smile warms, widens, and Regina reaches her hands out to cup his cheeks. His beard is thicker than Robin's, just a little, enough to be soft beneath her palms, and he needs a haircut desperately, those curls as floppy as ever and mussed from sleep. His jaw has a squareness that had still been all baby fat the last time she'd seen him, and seeing him like this, so _grown_ , sends a lance of pain and guilt straight through the middle of her.

All she can think to say to him is a wet, choked, "I'm sorry I stayed away so long."

Roland shakes his head at her, tells her, "It's alright, Regina, I understand. And so do they. They always have."

The sound of her name – her actual name – on the lips of a friend brings a fresh wave of tears to her eyes, and she drops her hands from Roland's cheeks to wipe at her own.

His words are a balm, although not much of one. She hasn't seen this boy since he was ten, and all for such ugly reasons. She couldn't stand to see his not-father with her other half. Couldn't bear the ache of their happy ending while she was still so… lonely. It had been alright, bearable, mostly, until Henry had left.

But then the loneliness, the _emptiness_ , had been so vast and yawning a chasm that she hadn't been able to bring herself to widen the gap by spending time in the Evil Queen's Happy Ending. Months had become years had become "well, what would I say after so long away?" and now here she is. Freezing on a fire escape in the Seattle dawn with what's become of a boy who's held her heart since a monkey came swooping down on him at four years old, while his father sleeps a room away, oblivious to what's under his roof.

"You're so grown up, and so handsome," she marvels, shaking her head at him (he ducks his head a little, manages to look a little bit shy). "Oh, Roland…" She sucks a breath in, lets it shake its way out, and then asks, "How are you here? How are _you_ awake?"

He jerks his head back in the vague direction of Robin's room and says, "I was looking for him. After she brought him back, Regina – the other Regina, the Queen – sent him to the realm where you were supposed to be, but when we never heard from him again, we went looking. We discovered the curse, and she sent us here to help get you two together and break it already."

"'Us'?"

"Robyn is roommate number three," he tells her, and Regina lets out a joyful little laugh. Well, that solves that mystery then – where Robyn had ended up after Roni had encouraged her abroad.

"So you finally got to spend some time together," she says gladly – that she'd let Robin's children grow up realms apart had always eaten at her, a private source of guilt she couldn't figure out how to resolve without forcing one child to uproot and move their whole life somewhere new. She should have dragged all the Merry Men back by their hair the second Storybrooke had been safe again – hired them all to do God knows what for the town, put them up in whatever accommodations they wanted, be it tents or condos, or, God, her back yard if it had meant that she'd be able to do right by Robin's kids.

She's always told herself it was too late by then, that Roland didn't deserve another upheaval. But one day in Dr. Hopper's office she'd confessed to him and him only that she wasn't sure she could look at Roland's face and not feel a constant, suffocating guilt that his father had been taken away to spare _her_. She didn't think she deserved it then – still doesn't now.

That they've had a chance to bond, finally, after all these years, is a balm on her heart.

Her heart eases even more when he smiles and says, "Lots of it, yeah. But we have, over the years, sometimes. Regina—the Queen—" That's never going to stop being confusing, is it? "—has been trying to bring my father back for a long time, and a lot of the things she tried needed pieces of him, or as close as she could get. And we're his children, so…"

Regina's jaw goes slack.

"How long is a long time?"

Roland shrugs and tells her, "Years. Since I was little."

"You – Robyn knew?" she questions. All these years, and… "Did _Zelena_ know?"

Roland smirks – his face is shaped so differently than Robin's now, but that smirk, that's all his daddy. So is the pace at which he nods and tells her, "They were sworn to secrecy – we all were. Most of what Regina tried didn't go anywhere, and she didn't want to get your hopes up. And then when it _did_ work, Papa wanted to tell you himself, so then _he_ swore us all to secrecy."

Tears spring to her eyes again, buoyed up by a mix of love and affection and shock and _guilt_. She laughs, wetly, and mutters, "Idiot. Was he… was he angry with me? That it was her trying and not me? That I... gave up on him."

She'd looked into ways to bring Robin back – she knew she shouldn't have, they'd gone down that road with Hook and ultimately gotten nowhere (his resurrection was a fucking gift from the gods, but Olympus forbid Robin's sacrifice be rewarded in kind). Still, she'd sought out a way. Something that didn't require an equal sacrifice. Something doable. She'd read every book in her collection, every tome in the Sorcerer's mansion. Quietly, secretly, she'd searched for two years, three, five.

And then she'd given up. The cost was always too high or required something she could never get her hands on.

Clearly her other half had been more determined. So there's a kernel of guilt amidst the rest of her riotous emotions, but she looks into Roland's eyes again, and sees so much of Robin, and the tiny measure of guilt is quickly drowned out by elation.

It helps that he's quick to reassure her, telling her, "No, he wanted you to. He wanted you to live your life. He was a little worried you'd have found someone else in the last fifteen years, but… he wasn't angry with you." He lifts his coffee toward his lips and adds, "Not about that, anyway. He was angry that there were two of you. He was angry when he found out why."

"He would be," Regina murmurs quietly. She's always known he'd never have stood for that. She'd had dreams when they were split – nightmares that Robin had returned and spurned her for the split, that he'd chosen to love her darker half instead. Some part of her, deep down, must have known that it was wrong.

"I think he was mostly angry at everyone else for letting it happen," Roland tells her, cradling his coffee gingerly in his lap. Regina finally reaches for hers, taking a tentative sip (strong enough to walk, she thinks with a smile – and blessedly warm). "I heard him talking to Regina about it one night – your heart was broken but they should have been there for you, not told you that any part of you was to blame. Something like that. He told her he'd never have let her be convinced that any part of her should die."

Once again, Regina finds herself jealous of her other half. She'd have given anything – _anything_ – to hear those reassurances from Robin. To be given that sort of absolution. To hear that constant, steady faith in her _goodness_.

She drops her gaze to the coffee cup warming her chilly fingers, her eyes suddenly swimming with unshed tears. "Losing your father…"

She wants to say it wrecked her. Ripped her up inside. Made her feel like a piece of her soul was missing, and how was she ever supposed to be okay again? How was she supposed to live with herself when someone so good loved someone as wretched as her and died for it? When his love for her orphaned children, and left his men leaderless and for _what?_ For _who?_ The grief of losing him had felt like a constant ripping in her chest, an unbearable tension that she'd thought maybe she could end by ending the dark part of her that surely had been punished for loving him.

But it seems too dramatic, and too… much. Too much to say to sweet, dimple-cheeked Roland, no matter how much older and wiser he might be. Her tumultuous mind back then isn't something she wants him to see, to know.

So she swallows thickly around the lump in her throat and instead she only admits, "I blamed myself. I… hated myself."

"He doesn't," Roland tells her, as if he knows how much she needs to hear it.

She blinks, and tears fall, and Regina swipes them away, her voice wobbly, her gaze still firmly on her coffee when she asks, "Do you?"

Roland reaches for her, his fingers wrapping around her wrist and squeezing. He waits until she glances up to tell her, "No. Never. Papa died to protect someone he loved. I don't remember a lot from before he died, but I remember that that's who he was. He died because of who he was, not because of who you were. I know that."

It's taken her so many hours, and so many dollars, and so much self reflection, but finally she can claim, "So do I. But it means a lot that _you_ know."

For a minute, they don't speak. She sniffles and takes another swallow of her rapidly cooling coffee, and Roland kicks his legs absently in a way that reminds her very much of how he used to sit on her back porch. Just as she's starting to get a handle on her tears, he gives them fresh fuel when he asks, "Were you afraid I blamed you too? Is that why you stayed away?"

Regina presses her lips together hard, her throat closing for a moment, tears surging up and spilling over, and it's all she can do to admit, "Yes."

He makes this move that is so like Robin – the pitch of shoulders, the way he nicks her coffee from her fingers and plops it behind them, tucking his own mug defty there as well before he scoots close and wraps his arms around her shoulders, and assures her, "I didn't. I loved you."

She shouldn't do this, he's just a child (he's not, he's grown, and this wound has so long been left to fester), but she breaks. Her shoulders shake, and she presses her face into the solid muscle of his shoulder, wetting the cotton of shirt with her tears as Roland— _Roland,_ sweet little Roland—rocks her gently.

His voice is soft but strong as he tells her, "When you love someone, you protect them. And he protected you, that's all. Papa was killed by a bad man, that's all I ever believed. I never blamed you, Regina, not even when I was little. He saved my Majesty, that's what I knew."

She's wrecked. She was not at all prepared for this. Robin being back was enough of a blow, but just now, in this moment, she's glad he's Abe Warner. She's glad he's cursed, because there is a depth of pain in her she didn't know was still this fathomless. She'd made peace with all of this, she thought, but here she is weeping on the shoulder of a child she was so sure she'd wounded irreparably just by wanting more, wanting to be loved, wanting his father.

Sometimes forgiveness hurts as much as it heals, and this morning it cuts deep.

If Robin was awake, if she was having this conversation with _him_ , suddenly she's worried she might never be able to stem the tears.

As it is, it takes everything in her wrestle them back to hitching breaths and wet sniffles. When she lifts her head and says, "I'm sorry," she's not sure if she's apologizing for her absence, or her tears, or Robin's death. She just knows she's sorry down to her very bones.

Roland only smiles at her, just the way his father used to. His hands rise, fingers and thumbs wiping tears from Regina's flushed cheeks, and suddenly she feels very much like their roles are reversed. Suddenly he's the grown-up, soothing her with gentle touches, and soft words, telling her, "You don't need to be. And he's back now, so… it doesn't matter anymore, right?"

Regina nods, and pulls away from him, finally, trying to stitch herself back together. She wipes at the last dregs of tears on her cheeks, and takes a deep, cleansing breath of chilly Seattle air. She grabs her coffee again, and takes a deep swig, and only then, when she's certain she's able to speak without her voice cracking, does she ask a question that's been nagging at her for weeks: "What was the price? It had to have been steep, for bringing someone back from Oblivion."

"I don't know," Roland tells her, with a shrug. "She wouldn't say. She took everything she needed and left by herself. Came back almost a month later. Robin was… not pleased."

"I bet," Regina mutters. She can't imagine anyone taking well to their spouse disappearing on their own to do powerful magic with the sole intent of bringing back their doppelganger. Even if it was in order to reunite him with Regina. With her. With… Forget the noise, the names and copies in her life are enough to give her a headache on their own. She shoves the thought aside, and tells Roland, "I looked, for a while. I never found anything that I could… that could be done. Whatever she did, it had to be powerful."

He sips his coffee and nods. Says, "It was. I don't know what she did, but… I know she looked like hell when she came home. It took a lot out of her, whatever it was, but she bounced back."

Regina doesn't like the sound of that. Magic is violent, potent. Full of energy, wind, crackling power. And the dark stuff, that can really take it out of you. Leave you feeling shaky, and nauseous, and jittery. (She still remembers the sickly vibration of it in her veins, under her skin, when she'd had to use the Dark One's dagger to free all those fairies years ago.) But usually, you still _look_ alright, especially in the time it would take to get back to the castle from, well… anywhere nearby with enough magical punch to get a job like this done.

Whatever the Queen had done, it had been intense, and Regina finds herself hoping that it wasn't anything she couldn't come back from. She also finds herself with one more person to worry about, it seems...

So she has a hard time selling the way she mutters, "Good. That's good…"

The sun is rising higher in the sky, and the morning feels… brighter. But somehow she feels colder. Maybe it's the tears, or the way her nose is all stuffed up from crying, or the chill of no longer being caught up in Roland's warm hug. But her toes are downright icy now (she should've worn socks; what was she thinking?), and when she reaches for her coffee, the mug is cool, the coffee headed firmly into lukewarm territory.

They should head back inside, just as soon as she's sure her face isn't splotchy from her crying jag. (She has absolutely no idea how she'd explain that one to Abe.)

"Can I ask you—" Roland says after a moment. "Why hasn't the curse broken? You've clearly kissed."

He says it casually, without judgement, but it takes until that moment for her to remember that she'd spent the night before fucking his father and not particularly quietly. Regina's eyes pop wide with horror (thank God she'd already swallowed her coffee).

"Oh god—Could you hear—How thin are these walls?" she questions with a rising sort of panic. It's one of her points of pride that never not once did she manage to have Henry walk in on or overhear her in a compromising position with a lover (his other mother can't claim the same), so this is a brand new flavor of mortification for her.

She feels her cheeks go hot when Roland offers a very droll, "No comment. Answer my question."

"Oh, my God," she groans, burying her face in her hands; she can _feel_ how hard she's blushing. "Oh, my _God_."

Just when she thinks she couldn't be any more mortified, Roland clears his throat a little and mutters, "If you could uh, not say that to me right now, that'd be great."

Regina practically chokes out her horrified " _Oh my_ —I am so sorry." She's never going to be able to look at this child again. Oh _God_ , Robyn is his other roommate. Robyn, her niece. Robyn, whose diapers she'd changed. Robyn who used to bake cookies in her kitchen and borrow her lipstick, and she just had to live through a night of listening to Cool Aunt Regina ride dick, Jesus Christ, she's going to fling herself off this fire escape. It's the only option that might preserve her dignity. Regina scrubs her hands down her face, looks up through her fingers but keeps her gaze trained firmly on the row of buildings across the street and _not_ on her soulmate's son as she says, "If I'd known _you_ were his roommates, we'd have gone back to my place."

"It's alright," Roland chuckles, and well at least _someone_ finds some degree of humor in this. (Maybe she will, someday, but not today.) Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him lean back on his hand and squint up at the sky as he tells her almost too casually, "At least you had the decency to do it behind a closed bedroom door, not in the middle of the courtyard in daylight like _some versions_ of you two."

Regina stifles a laugh; she doesn't even have to guess which courtyard, or where. She knows immediately which plinth her alter ego would have perched herself on for a sunny romp in the grand courtyard.

Somehow it helps ease the embarrassment a little – clearly last night was nothing he'd never seen or heard. At least this time he only had the audio track (she hopes to God he put in his headphones or something–in fact, she's going to assume that he did and not give him an opportunity to refute her).

She lets her hands fall, shaking her head and telling Roland, "I can't say I'm less embarrassed, but that does help, thank you."

Still, she can't bring herself to look at him even when he urges her back on track: "Answer my question."

It takes her a minute to even remember what the question was, she's so caught up in her quick death by embarrassment. But she manages to rewind her brain far enough eventually, and when she does she lets out a deep sigh.

Right. The curse, and why it holds. She's done plenty of thinking on this over the past few weeks, and to the best of her knowledge, it's, "Because Abe Warner doesn't love Roni Cope, much less Regina Mills. And anyway, I helped cast this curse. I don't know if I can break it. I don't think it works that way."

"You cast it?" Roland asks her. "Why? We were told it was some coven."

"It was—with my help," she exhales. "Henry was dying. Drizella poisoned him, to get me to cast the curse. Bringing him back to a land without magic was the only way to save him, and if this curse breaks… he dies."

Roland's "Oh," is about as crestfallen as she feels about the whole thing.

"Yeah."

She sneaks a glance at him then, and is struck by just how grown up he looks. He's scowling, his jaw set. No, not scowling—brooding. She's seen him pout, and tantrum, and all sorts of things that little boys do. But she's never seen him brood before, and it throws her off-kilter.

She doesn't have to wait long to hear what's weighing so heavily on this mind: "So all of this – trying to reunite you and my papa – was pointless then."

"No, I wouldn't say that," she's quick to reassure. "Having him back is not pointless to me. And I don't think it's pointless to you, or your sister. Or to him."

"I didn't mean that," Roland sighs. "I'm glad he's back. I never thought I'd get to…" He trails off, staring at his hands for a moment, his shoulders shifting in the tiniest shrug.

Never thought he'd get to know his father, she thinks, the thought making her heard ache. It cracks right down the middle when he adds, "And now I guess I won't. You'd never risk Henry, not even so my father and I could have a second chance."

Regina looks away; he's right, she wouldn't risk Henry for anything, but the idea that Roland might lose his father for it makes her belly twist with sick dread. She won't let that happen.

"I think we both know your father wouldn't want me to," she says gently, but then she's reaching for him, grasping his wrist and squeezing. "But Roland, we _will_ find a way. Somehow. We'll work together – you and your sister, and _my_ sister, and we'll find another solution. We'll figure out some way to wake everyone up _and_ save Henry. Together. You'll get your second chance with him, and so will I." She waits for him to look up at her, and then she meets his eyes and swears, "I promise."

For a second he just looks at her, and then he says quietly, "Don't make promises you can't keep, Regina."

Her eyes well with tears again, but she blinks them stubbornly away. She's not sure if it's his lack of faith in her, or the sheer fact that she still has no idea how to fix all this, but he's right, she can't _promise_ that.

"I'll try, then," she amends. "With everything in my power this time – I mean it. I won't stop until we can have both of them, awake and alive. _We_ won't stop. All of us, together, we won't stop until we've saved your dad, and Henry."

That, it seems, he can believe.

Roland's shoulders sag, but it's relief, not defeat, and he gives her a nod, takes a deep breath.

"You should tell Regina," he says. "About Henry – the poison. She'd want to know; he's her son too. And maybe she can help. She did bring a man back from Oblivion, after all."

And she has magic, Regina thinks with a flood of hope. Real, flowing magic, and a vault of supplies, several libraries full of books. There's only one problem:

"Do you have a way to contact her in this realm?"

Roland snorts a little, shaking his head in exasperated amusement and telling Regina, "I have to check in every third day or she starts sending me crows. She wanted to come herself once she heard about the curse but Robin – the other Robin – managed to convince her that if you were cursed, her walking in with your face was probably not a great idea."

"Yeah, I don't think Roni would have taken that well," Regina scoffs. She can only imagine how well _that_ would have gone over. "If I give you a note, you can send it to her?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Roland agrees, and suddenly everything looks just a bit brighter. That chill in her bones is warming, easing, and she doesn't think it has anything to do with the slow-growing warmth of the sun.

She reaches for Roland again, grasping his hand in hers, and telling him, "Thank you. I'm so glad you're here – you and Robyn. Ever since Drizella woke me up, I've been so lonely. It's been hell, being so close to all these people I know and love and not being able to really _talk_ to any of them. Not honestly. I know all of them but they don't know me. They don't even know themselves."

"Well you're not alone anymore," Roland tells her, squeezing back. For the first time since she woke up, that feels like the truth. "You're on Team...Save… Bandit…?" He winces, and admits, "I don't know, Robyn and I haven't really settled on a name yet."

"Mm." Regina's brow knits. "Henry would know what to call it. It'd be one of his Operations. Operation…" She comes up empty, too. She was never very good at this sort of thing. In the end, she gives up, and finishes, "...Something clever about waking up, or breaking curses, or… something."

"Operation Rise and Shine," Roland suggests teasingly and Regina laughs at him. "That sounds like trying to get my sister out of bed before noon."

Her smiles comes easily at that, along with a sympathetic little groan. "She did always like to sleep in. Your father used to say that you would rise with the birds, no matter how late you were up the night before. But Robyn, she'd sleep the day away if you let her, ever since she was little."

"That definitely hasn't changed," Roland chuckles. "You can sometimes get her up with food, though. Papa, too. Although he's been crashed out all morning more often than not lately."

"That may be my fault," Regina winces. "Owning a bar doesn't exactly lead to healthy sleeping patterns. Or a lot of free time that works with his schedule."

"You have the day off today, then?" Roland assumes. She thinks he might even sound a bit… hopeful.

"I had last night off," she corrects. "And I have a few more hours."

He nods, looks out at the skyline for a minute, and then he asks her, "You and the Queen, you have all the same memories, right? Up until the split?"

"We do…" Regina answers cautiously, unsure where this is going. Their conversation this morning has run the gamut.

"So you know how to make those apple cinnamon pancakes, then, right?"

He smiles as he says it, his eyebrows quirking, dimples flashing, and for a moment he's four years old again, plying her for rocky road ice cream on Main Street in Storybrooke, with one of his boyish smiles and a _Please, Regina?_ so sweet it could give her a cavity.

Her own face spreads into a grin, as she nods and tells him, "I do."

"I don't suppose I could talk you into them?"

The city is waking up around them, stretching into life. A dog barks on the sidewalk below, and Regina looks at this boy who isn't a boy anymore – a shadow of a life she'd had to walk away from, now shoved right back into the spotlight – and she says, "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

 **.::.**

They make apple pancakes, and another pot of coffee, the kitchen fragrant and homey by the time they're finished.

She's flipping a pancake on the stove when Robyn comes stumbling in, her blonde locks in a sleep-mussed braid, bits and pieces sticking out every which way.

Regina feels a rush of _rightness_ at the sight of her, a settling in her heart, and then the girl (she's not a girl anymore, she's practically grown), mumbles a sleepy, "Morning, Aunt Regina," before she can catch herself.

Regina sees the moment she realizes what she's said – blue eyes (Robin's eyes, too dark to be Zelena's) pop wide, and her mouth falls open a little.

Regina just smiles and says, "Good morning, sweetheart. Coffee?"

Robyn looks to Roland, who just shrugs and nods, as if that's answer enough.

And it'll have to be, because before there's any time to explain, the door to Abe's bedroom is opening, and he's wandering into the kitchen, too. He's shirtless, in a loose pair of sweats, that scar over his body still giving her pause as he stretches and yawns.

"You've all met then?" he asks, scratching at an itch on his chest.

"Yeah, we've been introduced," Robyn answers, with just enough wry amusement that Roland has to turn away to hide a snorting little laugh.

"God bless you, you made coffee," Abe mutters, leaning in to press a kiss to Regina's cheek before he reaches into the cupboard and pulls down a mug for himself.

He smells like sleep, and a bit like faded sweat, and he's clearly still a little bleary-eyed. Roland says something about her having made pancakes, too, and Abe grunts his approval, winding an arm around her waist, nosing into her hair. His voice is low and raspy and wonderful as he murmurs, "You didn't have to cook breakfast, love, but I can't say that I mind."

The little nip he gives to her earlobe is hidden by her hair, but she still feels a blush flare up the back of her neck at the idea that he's given her a love bite _in front of his children_.

Abe takes his coffee to the table; Robyn is already there nursing hers.

Roland holds out a plate for the pancakes, and when she glances up at him, Regina finds him smirking knowingly at her. She rolls her eyes, smiling like an idiot, because what else can she do at this point, really?

Their easy candor from the fire escape won't fly here – not in front of his father.

So they just pile that plate up with the rest of the finished pancakes, turn to join the others at the table.

The sight stuns her for a moment. The two of them, father and daughter, sitting in identical half-hunched positions, looking equally sleepy as they sip their coffee. They've even managed to choose matching mugs (the only two matching ones in the house, she's pretty certain). She's always thought Robyn favored her father, had seen glimpses of him in the shape of her face, or the color of her hair, her spirit of adventure, her curiosity.

But never has she been able to look at them in a room together and truly _see_ it. She never thought she'd ever get the chance.

It makes her knees a little weak, and she sinks into the open chair between Abe and Roland as much to give them a break as to dive into her plate of pancakes.

Abe and Roland are already digging in, but Robyn looks up from her coffee and catches Regina staring. Her brow furrows, a silent _What?_ And Regina just shrugs her shoulders a little and mouths, "You found him."

Robyn's brow smooths, a smile warming her face. She nods a little, and then reaches for her fork. Regina does the same, but she can't stop _looking_ at all of them long enough to properly eat.

She wants to pinch herself; this can't be real.

And then Abe says, "Y'know I'm not sure I told you this, but it was Roland who told me I should try your bar for lunch sometime. So I guess we have him to thank for getting us together."

She thinks of arrows, and monkeys, and a toddling little boy in a floppy cape; Abe has no idea how right he is.

The memory makes her grin, and she glances at Roland; he's smiling right back at her. She knows without question he's heard that story before, and somehow she's certain he's thinking of the same thing she is.

"Well, then I'm glad I made the apple pancakes," she says, hoping Abe thinks her smile is just her being polite.

When Roland answers, "Would you believe they're one of my favorites?" she hears Robyn snort back a laugh, and suddenly it all seems terribly funny.

Sitting here, with them, with her _family_ , or most of it anyway. She's missing a few vital pieces (missing the most vital piece), but so much of what is precious to her is right around this table – even if one of them doesn't know it.

She looks at her niece, at the man who was supposed to be her step-son, at their father who has no idea what the hell he's sitting in the middle of, and she grins.

They're all going to be just fine. Maybe it's not all sorted yet, but they have each other now, and they'll figure it out.

Together.


End file.
